February 27: Bits of Daily Life

This is the view from my bed this morning; snow! It's falling fast and thick, at least for the moment. It’s not supposed to amount to much but right now is coming down hard and it looks like a quarter of an inch has covered the ground in about fifteen minutes.  

Checking the weather forecast I see that the area is under a “snow squall warning” with “Intense bursts of heavy snow and gusty winds leading to blowing snow with rapidly falling visibility. Wind gusts up to 35 mph.  Roads may get icy and snowpacked. Travel will become difficult and potentially dangerous within minutes."

Ah, well,  I was going to walk with Dawn this morning but that’s not going to happen. I think I’ll take my cue from Turbo and Ben and lay around in bed a while. 

I think I’d rather have a snow squall than the crazy high winds of the past few days.  The gusts toppled our lawn chairs and blew all the pillows around.  

 

The wind even picked up the secured and tied umbrella right out of the patio table and hoisted it up and over the fence and into the front yard where it was found by our neighbor.   

Coupled with our low humidity the strong winds put us under a scary “Extreme fire danger” warning. It was two years ago that the Marshall Fire, carried by high winds, destroyed 1,000 homes in nearby Louisville, so these kinds of conditions are taken very seriously here.  And indeed, a small fire did erupt up in Chautauqua Park at the base of the Flatirons (about a mile uphill from our house).  Our firefighters were busy containing it for about 36 hours before it was declared “out.”  A bit too close for comfort.  

Boulder Fire-Rescue

It’s been a busy few days. It has dawned on me that a bottom canine tooth of mine is slowly but surely following its own path to freedom, heading away from the gum line and out into the uncrowded free air away from the rest of the bottom teeth, but hitting the top teeth as it travels.  We can’t have that, but figuring out what to do about it is involving much time consulting with orthodontists and oral surgeons and researching and weighing the pros and cons of braces and Invisalign, both of which sound annoying and even painful. 

For solace I admire my lovely flowers.  I've discovered the Friday Special at a local florist which offers about four different but compatible flowers at special prices so you can make your own bouquet.  I've been treating myself every other week, and it's brought me a lot of pleasure.

I’ve also spent a fair amount of time helping my Venezuelan friend figure out how to get married to her partner of several years. The pre/Covid bureaucracy of obtaining a marriage license for US citizens here in Boulder was easy, but now the entire process is remote so your identification documents are submitted during a video interview.  If you are a newcomer with minimal online connectivity and out of country paperwork, things get more challenging.  I offered to help and I am, but it does take some tenacity and time. 

For fun I took my friend shopping and out to lunch for her birthday.  We had a good time. 

We  enjoyed browsing in the mall and quickly realized that bright pink is now the in color!  Shades of Barbie are everywhere.  Fashion news continues to break first on this blog!

And I've been making a concerted effort to sew every day and finish up a few projects, including adding borders and a binding to the counted cross stitch piece that my mother made fifteen years ago.  It was sweet to be able to add my work to my mom's and make something that will remind me of her and her many talents.