Hello Spring

If you live in a part of the country where old man winter has over stayed his welcome, and you're anything like me you are probably long over winter by now. I'm so over it, in fact I would actually love to get my hands on that groundhog.

I know my complaining about winter taking too long to get on out of dodge is nothing new, but seriously this winter was taking this whole "out like a lion" thing a little bit too far. Us folks on the east coast had the pleasure of being bombarded by not one, not two, not three, but FOUR Nor’easter’s in a row this year. Which does not make for a happy Greek Girl if you know what I
mean.

So instead of working on learning the new music a colleague sent me to learn for a new project we're working on like I had planned to do. The Mr. and I spent nearly the entire month of March cleaning up the mess that one of those lovely Nor’easter’s left behind. We are thankful it was not worse, but it did leave a big impact nonetheless and loads of fun and follies for us to deal with.

It all started on March seventh, everything was pretty much shut down due to the impending storm. The Mr. was off from work and so we decided to go play in the snow. We put our snow gear on and went for a long walk in the afternoon. No big deal, it was beautiful, we took some photos and came back inside to get some lunch. We sat down turned on the news to see all the power outages across the northeast. Then it happened, we heard a "boom" and then the TV went dead, and all the power went off.

The Mr. & I playing in the snow before the muckery began.

I looked out my window and a branch had taken out the transformer on the pole by our house.  This transformer just so happened to supply power to our entire street. So the next thing you know all our neighbors are outside talking to each other asking if everyone has power or not. So then the Mr. decided we best go get a generator just in case the storm turns out to be as bad as the weather channel had predicted. Good thing he did. We jumped in the Jeep and arrived at Lowe's just in time.

 He literally got the last of the two generators they had in stock. He got it just as two guys walked up wanting to buy two. Luckily he already had one of them on his cart, so we got it. So we got home, and after about an hour of the Mr. doing a bunch of rigging with a flashlight, extension cords from the major appliances all over the house... voila we had power. Archaic as it was, it was power all the same.  It was dark by then and the furkids (three dogs and two cats) were all looking at us like the world was ending.

So then we settled in to have dinner and hunker down for the night. I was starving by this time and wanted to eat. The Mr. on the other hand thought he should go snowplow the driveway instead. I was too hungry to wait for that to be over, in fact I was getting a bit on the "hangry" side, so I insisted that we eat first, and then he could go clear the driveway. There is a lesson to be learned here... men always listen to your woman.

So we got dinner ready, sat down to eat listening to SiriusXM on my phone when all of the sudden we hear another boom coming from the other end of the house. Only this time is it so loud it shakes the entire house. I'm thinking, "Oh boy this doesn't sound good". We went outside to find his Jeep buried underneath a gigantic more than fifty-year-old tree. Had he not given in and let me eat dinner before he went outside, he could have been in that spot and not the car. See he had planned to move the Jeep and that is where he would have started clearing the driveway, ov vey!

Thankfully he listened to me and it was the Jeep under that tree and not him. Then came the four days without power, and seven days without Internet and TV. Then the glorious task of dealing with the cleanup of the mess the storm made. See this tree that fell, it was in a bundle of four trees. So when the one went, it caused the entire bundle to be compromised. It left two of the remaining three leaning so far out to the side they were almost sideways being held up only by another tree.

 

So we had to get a bunch of tree people to come in to estimate the cost to remove them. Along with figuring out with the insurance who was going to pay to get the tree off of the car so the adjuster could come survey the damage. Who knew if a tree falls on your car the auto insurance does not pay to remove the tree. See, you really do learn something new every day, even in a Nor’easter.

After a few days we worked it out and found the Jeep had in fact been killed that night. Then came the fun task of replacing it. So we immediately got on cars.com and started running all over the Tri-State NY/NJ/CT area to find another certified used Jeep with all the stuff he had on his with low miles, yes, good times for sure. Not really because anyone who knows me knows I would rather stick needles in my eyes than go car shopping. Who also knew that in NYS when a car is deemed a total loss you only get five days of rental reimbursement. Again, more learning going on for the noggin here in this situation.

Jeep murdered by Winter Storm Quinn
and replacement Jeep. Thank you cars.com

Then came the wrecking crew we hired to remove the remaining trees that were in danger of hitting the house. See after years of trees falling every time a hurricane or major storm comes along it was time to just get them out of the way. So the same day we picked up the replacement Jeep, we had a crew here taking trees out like nobody's business, I bet they could even give Paul Bunyan a run for his money.

It worked out in the end but by now, you can imagine I was and am ready for spring. Heck I'd be happy to even skip spring and move straight to summer. I will not complain about having to have the air conditioner on all the time. I will not complain about how hot it is. I will instead savor drinking iced cups of happiness all dang day long, and enjoy my flip-flops as long as Mother Nature will allow summer to stick around.

Why does it always seem like summer goes faster than winter does?

Hope you enjoy your day not matter what the weather is.

Blessings, Love & Music ~
Ava xo
www.avaaston.com