All week long, the news was consumed with speculation about the upcoming storm. It could blow out to sea. It could be historic. It could be meh.
By mid-week, it looked like blow out to sea was off the table, but
they still weren't certain about historic vs. meh.
But just in case...
Don't forget the bread! Don't forget the milk!
I had plenty of everything, but for whatever reason I began
craving chicken parmesan, something I seldom eat and never make.
But I really craved it. Sure, I could have just gone to the sub shop on Charles
Street and gotten a chicken parm sub. But I decided that it would be a good
thing to make on a snow day. So on Thursday, I did a little grocery run to pick
what I needed - parsley and mozzarella - to make my chicken parm dream come true.
The store wasn't particularly busy, but when I put on the evening news, they
were leading with scenes from local grocery stores where people were loading
up.
I swear that even people who weren't alive in 1978 go pre-blizzard
shopping as if the stores were going to be closed for days after the storm.
Which they were during and after the Blizzard of 1978. You were stuck with what
you had on hand. And when the stores first opened up, they were rationing the
bread and milk. (At the banks - this was pre-ATM - they were limiting your
withdrawal to $50.) Maybe genetic memory really is a thing. The people around
here certainly go completely crazy when there's a storm coming.
I always like observing what's in people's carts.
Hey, old empty nester couple my age: do you really think you're
going to need two gallons of milk.
And soda seems like a biggy, too. There was one guy they showed on
the news whose cart was crammed with Pepsi, and perched on top: a six-pack of
root beer and a mega frozen turkey. Okay.
The other theme on the news is always the run on the hardware
stores for shovels and snowblowers. Now, you may not have a snowblower. And I
suppose that last year's shovel may have broken. And you could of course be new
in town. But who that's lived in New England for a year doesn't already have a
shovel? So why are there so many people in the "gotta get a shovel"
category? Sheesh. I live in a condo building, and I even have my own personal
ice chopper.
Anyway, while people are complaining of grocery shortages country-wide
- and there have been NO empty shelves around here as far as I can tell, and
I'm in and out of Roche Brothers, and make irregular stops at Whole Food,
Trader Joe's, and Star Market, and I haven't seen any barren shelves since the
early stages of the pandemic - there really are hardware stores that, by the
end of last week, were out of shovels, snowblowers, and ice melt. (Ice melt I
fully understand. My building went through about 50 pounds during an earlier
January storm, and we've easily gone through that much this time around.
Fortunately, we have enough to get us through this storm and its aftermath.)
By Friday, the forecast was definitely leaning in the direction of
lot o' snow. And by Friday, I decided that I not only craved chicken parm, I
craved eggplant parm. So I made a quick stop at the grocery store for an
eggplant. There were major lines, but not at self checkout. Phew!
When I woke up on Saturday, it was snowing lightly and there
wasn't that much of an accumulation. But I put on the local news, which was
100% dedicated to THE STORM, and started watching weather porn.
The scenes could have been filmed years ago and just taken out and
re-run for the latest storm. But news is news, and it'd better not be fake!
Here's what's happening in Sandwich on the Cape! Here we are watching
ice-covered waterfront homes in Scituate! Here we are finding out whether at
least one house on Plum Island will float out to sea! (For all the watching I
did, I still don't know what happened to the house in Truro that was propped up
at the edge of the sandpile it was built on. Did it make it through? The owner,
we were told, was planning on moving it after the storm. Might
have been more prudent to move it before the storm.)
All day long, as the storm picked up energy, the big question was
would we break the one-day snow accumulation record. Which I think we did in
Boston, as we ended up with 24.5" of snow. I'm just not sure what record
we broke. Record for January 29th? Record for January? Record for winter?
Whatever it was, it was A LOT.
When I wasn't riveted to the screen, I'd look out at the storm,
and it was quite beautiful. A couple of times, I walked out to the front door
and looked over at the Public Garden. I missed my opportunity to be on TV. At
one point, when I was weather watching, I saw that the Channel 4 weather
van/truck/monster vehicle was making its way down my street. Sure enough, they
went right by my front door, and I could have been out there waving. But I
wasn't.
And other than those brief looks out the front door, I didn't go
out at all. As I could see on the news, there were a lot of folks - with lots
of kids and dogs - cavorting around on the Boston Common. I suppose I could
have joined them, but the wind was whipping, the temperature plummeting, and
snow coming down at a clip of more than 2" an hour. So I stayed in and
watched out. Got two loads of laundry done. Did a bit of reading. Took a
nap-een. Texted with friends elsewhere who wanted to know how things were
going.
Being snowbound is fun!
After dark, I made my chicken/eggplant parm. Quite messy but
yummy. And something of a PITA to make both for the same dish. Next time of
craving, it'll be either-or. I had leftovers for dinner last night, and will do
it again tonight. The rest is going to be bagged up and put in the freezer,
where I'll be pleased to find it at some point.
Sunday was cold but lovely.
I got most of my steps inside. (There's an empty unit upstairs,
and the door's open. It's a floorthrough, so excellent for pacing. I've told
the folks who live downstairs from it to let me know if my pacing is annoying,
but so far they're fine.) But by mid-afternoon I wanted out.
And how gloriously beautiful that snow is when it's pristine! In a few days, it'll be shrunken down, grey with street dirt and slush, full of yellow doggy pee stains. But for now. Just gorgeous.
I walked around the Public Garden, and a bit along Charles Street,
but no matter how well-shoveled, those bricks on Charles Street are slippery. I
have no desire to break a hip, so I headed back in. I was happy to get out and
un-snowbound. (Between pacing indoors and gingerly walking outdoors, I was able
to get 6 miles worth of steps in.)
The picture is a shot of where I live - I'm in that taller
building - taken from the Public Garden.
Lucky girl, me!
Fun while it lasted, but I hope this is the last of the mega
storms for a while. Snowbound, even for a day, should be a once-a-year kinda
sorta thing.
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