Going stir crazy after this blizzard...

Wednesday night, I could have gone to the store and stocked up on some things that I was out of like Diet Mountain Dew, Diet Dr. Pepper and the like, but instead, I chose to wait until I got paid. I guess you could also say that I was procrastinating, which is kind of what I tend to do around my house.

For example, I had two shelves to hang in the bathroom. I hung one on Sunday and I finally hung the second one yesterday. The rest of the time, I kept walking past the toolbox next to the bathroom thinking about it. And boy did I have plenty of time to think about these past few days!

I mentioned to my wife that Wednesday night that it was supposed to snow about 6 inches and we may have Julia's day care canceled, which mirrors whatever the local school system does. Otherwise, I was thinking about coming in late anyway because I've been having this sort of virus that people have been getting around work. It's king of like a cold, but not really. It's not as annoying, but seems to stay with you longer. You're full of yellow mucus and you feel tired in the afternoon. Otherwise, it's tolerable. I was hoping to get some rest on Thursday so I had already cleared it with my boss that I was going to come late to try and shake it.

My wife grunted that it was only going to snow 1 to 3 inches and that she didn't think day care was going to be canceled.

So I wake up that morning to the winds howling and swirling. I look outside and it's like a scene out of John Carpenter's The Thing, in which a bunch of workers up north in very snowy conditions encounter a monster. It looked like that except no monster.

I tried to get a read on how deep it was but it was hard to tell. At first, it didn't look like it was going to be that deep because it didn't look that much snow on the driveway.

Sure enough, the public schools were closed and so was my work's day care, so I was homebound.

I can log into work from home, so I tried to get some work done before my wife had to go to work. She told me she was going to leave, so I quit for for a while and went to see if she'd need me to shovel her out. Sure enough, she did.

Laura walked out and then walked back in from the garage and muttered, "Yeah, you're going to have to help me get out."

I open the garage door (after getting bundled up) and sure enough, there was a lot of snow and why I couldn't tell how deep it was was obvious. The snow had drifted because of the strong winds. I got my snow blower working and cleared a huge drift off from in front of the garage (about 3 feet high) and the finished the rest of the driveway. Near the end of the driveway was a scary sight. The snow looked very deep. I thought that there was no way she was going to get out. But my wife, fresh from her fantastic weather prediction, said, "I can make it. My car is great in the snow."

So she backs out to the end of the driveway.... and promptly gets stuck.

Laura tried to go forward and backward to gain momentum, but there was no getting her out. I tell her to just forget it. Pushing on her car, I managed to get her unstuck and we get her car back in the garage. Inside, she calls work and secures a ride from a co-worker who's out west on an assignment.

While we wait for the ride, we watch the live weather coverage and it not only says that we've had a major winter storm, but that it's blizzard conditions.

I joke with my wife, "Boy, you really guessed that one right. I'd hate to have you as our weather person. 'Folks, it's only going to be 1 to 3 inches, so suck it up!'"

Laura gets to work and I'm stuck at home with Julia. Now don't get me wrong, I really love my daughter, but it can be a little much with her lately. She's on this question fix. She constantly asks what would be affirmative questions. For example, we watched Flushed Away while I made her lunch that day and it was non-stop questions like:
"Sid is a naughty rat, right?"
"Roddy doesn't like Sid, right?"
"Sid flushed him down the toilet, right?"
"He doesn't know how to swim, right?"
"Roddy thought he was falling, right?"
"He wants to get home, right?"
"He's trying to find a boat, right?"
"That fish was talking, right?"
"Those slugs are afraid of Roddy, right?"
"I like the slugs. The slugs are singing, right?"
and on and on...

After a while, I worked again and then had to play with Julia. I started to notice something disturbing, I was running out of supplies, mainly Diet Dr. Pepper and Diet Mountain Dew.

I like to mix up my diet pops. I usually have a Diet Dr. Pepper on the way to work, following by a Diet Mountain Dew bottle at my desk. For lunch, it's Diet Coke on ice. On the way home, it's another Diet Mountain Dew. Yes, I'm addicted and it was even more apparent these past few days.

I kept looking out the window for any signs of a snow plow, but there were none to come. I grabbed a Diet Dr. Pepper and noted the pop count, I was down to two after the one I just took. A quick check of the fridge showed an already open a few days ago Diet Dr. Pepper two liter bottle.

Conditions outside remained horrible and by noon that day, a minivan had gotten stuck on my street. Later, a Jeep Cherokee got stuck. Did I mention that this was in right in front of my house? Yes, both cars were stuck in the middle of the street in front of my house. The odds of plows coming was not looking good.

I tried to ration the pop, I really did, but when you drink as many as I do, you start jonesing for a pop fix fast. It wasn't long that early the next day, I was officially out of my stash of pop. I then had to start drinking my wife's awful Diet Cherry Pepsi.

Day Care was closed again that Friday as the winds had kept the plows from doing a decent job on the roads. People were encouraged to stay off the roads if they could.

By the end of the afternoon that Friday, I had had enough and so had my wife. Like me, she was off that Friday, but she couldn't go anywhere. As the day progressed, she reported some more bad news: we were down to our last role of toilet paper. This was getting serious! Who knew how long we would be stuck before we got out!

I started thinking how I would have had a hard time coping if I was stuck in New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina. I could barely muster the mental stamina to go without my usual soft drinks, so I wasn't thinking too positive on my survival skills at that moment. I'm sure I'd be stuck in my house when people in boats would paddle by asking me if I needed any supplies. I'm sure my request would be, "Do you have any Diet Mountain Dew in bottles? Oh and bring back some ice if you can. Thanks!"

I now realize why my Dad was always so diligent about stocking up before a storm. If bad weather was coming, he would go and buy a few more cases of Budweiser just in case.

One time, I came home from college to visit and my Dad asked me to get the beer out of his trunk and put it in the garage. I opened the trunk and pulled out 6 whole cases of beer.

After stocking his beer shelf, I went inside and said to my Mom, "You know, Dad just asked me to get his beer of his car and he had 6 cases in there."

My Mom looked confused. "Six? He usually buys, Nine," she said without kidding.

I'd be willing to bet that this practice was the result of our family being without power after Grand Island was decimated by a Tornado in June of 1980. A third of the city was destroyed and we were without power, so we toughed it out... for about a day. Then we packed it up 30 miles to the east where we had a trailer at a "lake". We'd always only spend time there Friday through Sunday during the summer, but it had electricity and running water so off we went. Plus, it was next to a small town that had the basics in food supplies, so we stocked up and was good to go. The big downside was that I had to endure about 2 weeks of no cable tv. I almost went insane trying to not to imagine all the great HBO entertainment I was missing. It was a tough time in the Homan household having to endure these basics while our fully intact house roasted in Grand Island, but we made it through some how.

...

My wife ever so gently reminded me that it may be possible to dig out and get to the store.

"Someone just passed by!"

Both cars had been dug out, but the path that was being driven on by cars was only one car wide and the only cars I had seen try it were trucks with those double wheels on the end. My car may be an SUV, but it's not a very tough one.

"I keep seeing someone passing by!" she said later. "We could totally make it out! Come on! Wuss boy!"

So now I was a wuss boy.

So we marched outside and started shoveling the end of the driveway to get our car out. Rather, I shoveled while my wife had to continually take cover from the blustery wind every two minutes it seemed. I started calling her Wuss Girl. Finally, I busted through the snow drift. We decided to chance it and got in the car. I made it out okay and we went to the store to get supplies.

I grabbed a 24-pack of toilet paper (just in case), a case of Diet Dr. Pepper and a 12-pack of Mountain Dew bottles because it was supposed to snow again and you never know...

We get back to our home subdivision and we promptly get stuck at the entrance. We get pushed out and my wife wants to drive because she feels she's the better driver. I let her and she promptly gets stuck in the driveway.