Snow days!

The world is white, almost all white. There are enough colored accents to mark where houses and trees and vehicles still exist. However, they are only punctuation to the long snowfall sentences we’ve been hearing the past couple of days.

To update you on my last entry, the baby (a healthy and beautiful little girl) was delivered safely and was enthusiastically welcomed before the roads became impassible.

A revised offer was accepted by the current homeowner of the home which our son is now closer to purchasing.

Two children are still residing comfortably away from home during the storm.

And one is here with us, having survived a harrowing trip down the notorious hill on her way home after visiting her sister, brother-in-law, and newborn niece in the hospital. Her heroic papa came to her rescue (which he gladly attributes to many years of driving experience and a lot of outside assistance).

But here we are, firmly and emphatically enclosed in our home for probably another couple of days. We are still fortunate to have power, a benefit many are currently lacking. And we have hours upon hours of empty time.

The power did go out last night for a while. We scurried around and got the oil lamps lit. And then we sat in the semi-light and wondered what to do. No television. No books. Barely enough visibility to continue my knitting. And scarcely any topics of discussion, especially after we determined all the ways in which we were not prepared for emergencies!

Perhaps we all need this type of downtime periodically. I do remember a similar two-week period while I was in France. A bad case of bronchitis had required that my companion and I remain inside. Winter had taken its toll on me, both physically and emotionally. Those two weeks were a good opportunity to review and regroup. The rest of my time in France was different because of those two weeks.

I keep thinking that a huge block of totally free time when I could work non-stop on my family history would be so-o-o-o desirable. Several years ago, I had about three months of such freedom. And, believe it or not, I didn’t get tired of working consistent eight- to ten-hour days while computerizing my notes.

So what would you do if you were housebound for two or three days? Then what would you do if the power went out? Even more serious, what would we all do if the power outage lasted for weeks...or forever. As dependent as we have become on electronic files, is it possible that we would one day be very grateful for a paper printout of our research?

Something to think about........when you have time.