Medium Dawn Felagund of the Fountain

Today is Imbolc, which is the halfway point between winter solstice and spring equinox. To all who observe Imbolc as part of your spiritual or cultural tradition, I wish you a good day and spring to come!

Today was a rather appropriate Imbolc for us. Today is the warmest it's been in weeks. ( Read more... )

It was 70F (21C) in Woodlawn this afternoon. Seventy! Seventy, in late January, in central Maryland! Seventy!!

Remember, folks, that global warming is a hoax created by liberal scientists with, of course, the help of the liberal [gotcha] media. In fact, if I had set up a video camera outside last night, I bet I would have seen some clandestine climatologist fiddling with the car thermometer while Bobby, the Goldens, and I slumbered naively. Really, it was about 40F today. But why did it feel like 70F? (I couldn't keep the students out of the damn door today, not that I could blame them.) Why, because brainwashing embedded in liberal print and television media has cleverly convinced you that it is actually warm outside when, in fact, it's pretty cold. That's how that works, if you were wondering.

It's raining like crazy right now and thunderstorms are predicted for later tonight. Thunderstorms! (Actually, it's Jesus bowling with the angels in Heaven, but that damned liberal media has also brainwashed us all to think it's thunder and treat it as a weather anomaly rather that a proper celebratory occasion.)

My legs and feet hurt like hell right now. The school got its money's worth out of me today. All of my classes were firing on all cylinders (which happens less often than Jesus bowling with the angels in Heaven!), and so I was on my feet all day, running around like a goof, being properly erudite and entertaining. Last period, during the twerps' class, it must have sounded like a small riot was going on in my room, but we were actually doing a cooperative activity about indirect characterization. It was fun, albeit noisy. It was the twerps, so there was scuffling for a place at the board and much outshouting of each other. I also discovered that one of my 9th graders--ADHD and presently off his meds--reacts like a cat to a flashlight beam when I shine my laser pointer on the floor. By last period, yes, yes, I will admit that on at least two occasions I used that to keep him semi-focused.

Tomorrow morning, the seniors are watching a documentary about King Arthur and the 10th graders are going to do at least a little independent work, so the Ms.-W-T-tap-dance-for-the-students routine is going to be somewhat turned down. Maybe I'll do a nice, soft, interpretive dance routine instead. (Hey, I do act out vocabulary words sometimes.) For the afternoon classes, all bets are off. They're my most energetic groups, and a lot of times, it's tap-dance routine or get-trampled-like-a-scatter-rug-in-an-elephant-stampede.

Okay, the weather alarm just went off ... we're under a tornado watch in Carroll County. I'll let y'all figure out the conspiracy theory behind that one. I'm beat.

Well, the storm is really getting underway here ("here" being Carroll County, which is the first county considered to be Western Maryland). I woke up this morning to heavy rain on the roof and the familiar plunk of water into containers from roof leaks. As soon as this one is over, we will be calling a roofer to have that ridge cap replaced.

The wind is starting to gear up. I was washing the dishes and looking out the window at the backyard, and a very scary gust came through and just tossed the trees around. The last map I saw showed the hurricane coming over us tonight. Tropical storm winds could stick around as long as Wednesday morning. This is insane. Tonight, we could get wind gusts up to 80 mph (129 kph) with sustained winds around 40-50 mph (64-80 kph).

But, as far as it goes for those hit by the hurricane, we are lucky. Even though it looks like we will have hurricane-force winds--a first for my lifetime, at least as far as I can remember--we will be on the outskirts. We are not near water, here in the foothills, so flooding is not a concern for us as it is for so many towns and cities along the east coast. We will not take a direct hit. My thoughts go out to those on the coast and in Jersey and New York, who are looking to bear the brunt of it.

( Pictures and Video below the Cut of Damage to Ocean City )

Here, the wind gusts are getting stronger. From my window, I can see the white pines that border the back of our property. The winds aren't strong yet to bend the trunks, but they are giving the branches quite a thrashing. It's frightening to see. I remember Tropical Storm Floyd (on my 18th birthday!!) when I was still living with my parents, watching the winds play with the tuliptrees in the woods behind the house. (Tuliptrees are the tallest deciduous trees in our area, reaching 150 feet or 45 m.) I've no doubt it will reach that point here soon.

I don't know how much longer I will have Internet access, but I will keep trying to post updates. In the meantime, to all who are in the path of this monster, be safe. I am thinking of you.

There's been some craziness going on up here on our hilltop. First of all, a black bear has been spotted multiple times in our neighborhood. It was first spotted on a road that joins ours. We get bears periodically in Carroll County (the week we moved here, there was a rabid bear over in neighboring Taneytown!), but they don't apparently reside here; they move on pretty quickly. This one is supposedly young and small. It's the closest to home that we've had a bear since moving here. I'd like to see it, just as long as I don't see it tipping over our beehive!

Last night, Bobby and I were supposed to go out for our anniversary, but we had to revise our plans thanks to the weather. Over the course of yesterday afternoon and evening, Manchester was placed under four consecutive tornado warnings. ( Tornado Madness! )

For all the fuss that was made over Irene, she left Maryland pretty much unscathed ... at least, it could have been much worse. Here in Manchester, we got a measly 4 inches of rain.

Now, however, the tropical system Lee is grinding his slow and steady way up the coast. Over the past day and a half, our rain gauge shows close to 6 inches. It's relentless. It's been much higher in other places in the state. Today at school, it seemed I'd look outside once per period and could barely see across the parking lot, it was raining so hard.

Our former hometown of Ellicott City apparently flooded pretty badly today. Ellicott City is notorious for its sudden, severe, and often deadly floods. (My crusty old ghost story Cold Hands [f-locked] was based on the worst flood in the town's history.) It's pretty surreal to watch the video and remember the number of times we walked Alex down those very sidewalks or went walking on Halloween, looking up into windows in hopes of catching a glimpse of the purported ghosts that haunt the town.

( Video beneath the Cut )

Of course, because of the driving and excessive rain, our bedroom ceiling has been leaking like crazy. Bobby has like five or six containers in there now, catching the water. We've been sleeping down in the basement in lieu of sleeping with a big black steamer pot in bed between us. If the rain ever lets up, he's going to check the roof and hire a roofer if he can't find the problem.

We need to feed the bees but neither of us want to do it in the pouring rain. This is supposed to continue through the weekend, according to my resident weather nerd. My cousin is getting married this weekend too ...

On a completely unrelated note, it seems that the mild terror that I feel whenever driving anywhere south or east of Carroll County is not unjustified. It has long been my theory that Woodlawn--the Baltimore suburb where our school is located--has the worst drivers in the country. It seems that Allstate Insurance has released a list of the most accident-prone cities in the U.S. and guess what? DC tops the list with Baltimore in the #2 slot. Yay us. Well, at least I feel slightly less neurotic for my decreasing desire to venture forth from the sticks while behind the wheel of a car.

We are in the middle of a deluge. Bobby and I had the displeasure of waking up this morning to a soaking wet bed. The roof over our bed was leaking. We've been in this house for three-and-a-half years, and the roof has never leaked. Of course, this is extraordinary rain.

Bobby initially thought that Lancelot had been working on licking the blankets. He's been sleeping at the bottom of our bed at night, and he gets into these obsessive licking phases where he'll lick something for an hour, until it's dripping. Then Bobby realized that it was a little too wet to blame on Lance.

I was in the middle of a dream when I woke up because Bobby was flipping the lights on to check the roof, then off again to keep from waking me (I presume). I was in an attic somewhere with Bobby and Erin, and a long black snake with yellow stripes dropped down in front of us. I grabbed it so that it wouldn't reach them, and it bit me. It was a rattlesnake (no it wasn't; rattlesnakes look nothing like this, but in Dreamland, it was a rattlesnake). It somehow bit both of my hands. The weird thing is that I could feel my hands going numb in the dream.

Then I woke up, and the roof was leaking, and the dog was soaking wet.

When Bobby checked CoCoRaHS this morning, we'd already received 1.5 inches of rain. Squinting out the window at the meter now, it looks like we've gotten about .3 inches since then. When I went into the Elves' room this morning, their ceiling was leaking too. Some reports are saying we could get 8 inches (~20 cm). We just planted some winter-hardy vegetables the other day, and we're most worried that the seeds will wash away, although Bobby made some makeshift covers for them with old sheets yesterday.

Bobby just called to let me know that he arrived safely at work. He took one of our weather radios with him this morning, and on the ride to work, it came on and announced that a waterspout had been spotted near the Bay Bridge.

Okay, I'm all about accepting and adapting to whatever Mother Nature throws at us, but this is getting ridiculous. First of all, we haven't had rain in a month*. The rain barrel is empty, and The Jungle, aka the vegetable garden, looks sorry indeed.

*Okay. We received 0.2" while we were down the ocean, according to Bobby's CoCoRaHS rain gauge. Woohoo.

It's also been insanely hot. We survived one heat wave already with temperatures reaching 100+F in Baltimore (the low 90s or about 32C here). When we heard this current heat wave was coming, Bobby cried uncle and put in the AC units because, today, temperatures could get as high as 107F/42C in Baltimore and might even reach 100F/37C in Manchester. I'm not sure what they are because, while I usually eat lunch out on the patio, even I have my limits, so I ate my food out of bowls while lounging on the couch and reading Walt Whitman. I figure that if the AC is on, I might as well enjoy it.

This morning, I woke up and there was snow on the ground. Snow! In April! In Maryland! Yes, I know we live in north-north Maryland now but still. Snow in April is ridiculous. Hasn't it ever heard the saying that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb? What the hell kind of lamb is this? A Monty Python killer lamb??

I know I'm not old enough to tell uphill-both-ways stories yet, but I don't ever remember snow in April.

This has been the longest winter that I can recall. It started the first week of November. I remember this well because our Halloween party was on 1 November, and we had a lot of people attending for our small house, so I wished very hard for a day warm and pleasant enough that many of them would want to go outside ... and I got it. 1 November was gorgeous! And, a few days later, temperatures dropped precipitously, and I felt as though I'd paid for that one perfect day. And it stayed cold and miserable, so much that Bobby and I were both expecting a white Thanksgiving. (Which we didn't get because, despite winter hanging around for five months, we had a record low snowfall. Double boo!)

I'm ready for winter to be done and over! I miss baring my arms in public and my legs below the knee! I really needed a long skirt and boots today, but I refuse to wear boots in April. So my legs were cold. Oh flippin' well.

(angelica_ramses, has the miserable summer stuck so adamantly in your part of the world as miserable winter has here? I do hope not!)

On a positive note, it is Bobby's birthday today. The old man is 28. Because we are planning a trip to Ireland this summer, he has refused all birthday gifts from me to save for the trip. We did, however, have an excellent dinner at the Thai restaurant in Westminster. And I'm off for the rest of the week, and Bobby is on Spring Break, so we can stay up together until the small hours of the morning. We're hoping for weather pleasant enough tomorrow to inaugurate the hiking season.