Life During Wartime

Welcome to Day 8 of "The City Under Siege."

Crazy stuff in our normally fair city. Here's where we're at post-blizzard. Our street has yet to be plowed. Our alley is hopeless. I finally got the car out of the garage for the first time on Tuesday.

On Saturday, Nigel sprained his ankle and has been mostly unable to walk. The car was in the garage facing the alley. The alley is virtually impassable, and we couldn't risk that the car would get stuck there, as I'd be on my own (our neighbors are out of town.) Alas, it didn't, though there were a few nervous moments with spinning wheels, but the car is now out. Hurrah!

One of the strangest things here--something I've never seen in Colorado--is that the grocery stores are facing unprecedented shortages. On Friday, I picked up a few of the last red potatoes (the russets and new potatoes were gone), and Nigel picked up milk since the store I was at was already out, save four one gallon bottles. Thankfully, I didn't grab one of those. As it turned out, I walked home through the snow since my bus never came and in some places the snow had not been shoveled at all and I was trying to make my way through knee-deep patches. I would have abandoned the milk!

Well, now another storm is on its way beginning later today. While this one technically is not a blizzard (that has to do with sustained wind speeds), they're expecting nearly as much accumulation as we got last week. One of our local weather guys proclaimed with surprise this morning, "In my 20 years here, I've never seen back-to-back storms like this!" Oh, joy. And to think that the wheelbarrow in our front yard popped out yesterday. Thankfully, my hair cut that was canceled last week is on for this morning--I don't know how much longer I could suffer with this mop of hair. It's inhumane.

So, DIA just got out the last stranded passengers on Tuesday--just in time for more tonight and tomorrow. Schools are already announcing closures. I went to the grocery store yesterday to pick up a prescription and the place was packed, with huge gaps on the shelves. Bread: gone. Milk: nearly gone. Potato chips: gone. Eggs: gone. Ditali: gone. Garlic-stuffed olives: gone. So this must be what it was like to live in Soviet Russia or London during the War, eh? (I kid. I kid.)

I spoke with the cashier who told me that normally they get two delivery trucks a day but that they've gotten just two in a week, as stores all over the area have the same shortages. And she said this time people seem to be paying attention--everyone is after milk and the other staples (like frozen pizza and Buffalo wings.)

So, here we go again. Wish us luck. I got some groceries, some peanut butter to last a couple of days. I'm gonna grab the TV remote, chill with some On Demand and Netflix movies, see what's in the deep freezer to make for dinner, and hunker down for a few days. Just like in the War.