Then and Now

Hair freezing

March 19th, my hair froze on my seven minute walk to work. I just wanted to document the fact that having my hair freeze is an actual thing that happens. The end.

I’m so proud

We did it. I’m so proud! Not that I really did anything but I do feel a sense of accomplishment for some reason. 108.6 inches of snow! And 90 of those inches fell in 30 days. Madness! According to my favorite Boston weather blog, it’s unlikely that I’ll ever experience that ever again. So thank you for that Boston.

Of course by now, almost all of the snow has melted unearthing all kinds of grossness that’s been buried in snow for a month. The city looks kind of odd. I had gotten so used to seeing all that snow and now I feel like it all melted over night. I forgot what the ground looked like. I’ll be walking home from work and I’ll stare at the ground and think, “Was that sidewalk always there? Wasn’t there a snow mound there yesterday?” And pretty soon, I’ll be seeing yellow daffodils popping up everywhere. I can’t wait!

Snowshoeing

Since I don’t drive or take the T, all the snow we had this winter was not as major an inconvenience to me as it was to most people. In some ways it was nice. I had several snow days (and you know I love snow days) but I was cooped up inside for a LOOONG time and my Mr. was away for most of the month on business trips. Which means I was starting to get a little nutty and more than a little lonely.

Once I ran out of things to clean, I baked. I baked like my life depended on it. And then because I had nowhere to go, I ate it all. Needless to say, as soon as it hits 50 degrees, I’ll be lacing up my running shoes.

I needed to get outside. I needed air and preferably a little sun for my vitamin D deficient body. So when it warmed up last weekend (and by warmed up I mean 30’s… hot damn!), my Mr. suggested that we try out snowshoeing. I was skeptical. I’m not much of an outdoorsy, sporty person and least of all a winter outdoorsy, sporty person. Plus I YouTubed a video of it and it looked ridiculous. But my Mr. borrowed some snowshoes from his co-worker and we figured it’s our last chance to try it out so off we went to Hopkinton State Park.

The park is really beautiful even in the winter when the trees are bare and the lake is covered in snow.

We couldn’t see the trails since they were buried in several feet of snow but we found a relatively open area and made our own trail. I have to admit, it was pretty fun. It’s amazing that we barely sank in to the snow. It kind of makes you feel invincible.

We thought our footsteps looked hilarious. Like two demented ducks out for a stroll.

We didn’t see any animals or birds but we did see evidence of their comings and goings. Little paw print trails and deep, deep holes in the ground that lead to winter burrows. I would peek into these holes, curious about their inhabitants but also terrified that they would pop out and claw my eyes out.

Thanks for convincing me to go on this random adventure! It was so good to get out of the house and breath in some fresh air. I really needed the exercise. I’m so glad we got to try this while living in New England.

105.7 Inches

So 100+ inches of snow later, I think it’s finally safe to say that spring is on its way. I won’t lie, it was a rough month. I think this BuzzFeed should be kept in an historical archive somewhere because it perfectly captures the madness of this winter.

It’s strange how fast this obscene amount of snow became so normal. One day, I was walking between campuses and I stopped on the sidewalk and realized that I was walking in a snow tunnel. The path I was on was just wide enough for one person and on either side of me was a wall of snow that came up to my chest. It didn’t even occur to me to take a photo of it. It didn’t seem all that unusual at the time. I’m an obsessive weather checker. I check the daily weather report the minute I open my eyes in the morning. But this winter, I stopped checking the weather because unless a blizzard was coming, the weather didn’t really matter. And I could easily tell whether a blizzard was coming based on the state of the bread/cereal/chips aisles at the grocery store.

To be honest, I’m all for more snow at this point. We’re at 105.7″ right now and we just need 1.9″ more to break the record set in 1995-1996 and I want to break that record! What’s the point of all this snow if we don’t at least get a history making record out of it? Let’s do this!!