Black Ice and Diapers

I am on the phone a lot with people from different parts of the country for work and when they hear I am in Minnesota, I get the typical, "MINNESOTA?!  Is it cold up there yet?" 

They ask that in August when it is 84 degrees.  And I'm being serious. 

Born and raised in Minnesota, I have a lot of state pride and I am constantly defending my state and trying to display Minnesota in a good light.  I feel like people have the wrong impression.  I do my best to explain that Minnesota is a beautiful four season state and just because our winters get the most attention, doesn't mean that's how it is ALL the time. 

I tell people they would probably love Minnesota if they came to visit...and then classify that by telling them if they do come to visit, to come between May and October.  And if you want to be on the safe side of that, really June through September.  But July or August are sure bets. 

One guy the other day said, "Yeah, I have a buddy from Minnesota and he said the winters were so bad that all they had to do was stay inside and drink all winter."

"See?  I said.  Yet another reason to love this state!"

I try to put a positive spin on things and use words like "embrace."  Minnesotans "embrace" winter.  We figure...it's cold...it sucks...but let's make the most of it.  We have sledding parties, play hockey, make skating rinks on the frozen lakes, ice fish, build fires and snowmen, and have a great excuse to go on lots of warm weather vacations.  And when the weather does turn beautiful and warm for the other half of the year, we appreciate it that much more and squeeze in as much as we can during that time--like go boating, enjoy our lake homes, eat outside, entertain outdoors, and go to the ballpark.

And as any fellow grape grower will know, we are constantly having to explain how we are, indeed, able to grow grapes in this state.  Yes, we do actually have a lovely growing season.  We are not snow covered year round and we make some darn good wine too!  I addressed that here.

Now.  All this being said, I don't have a fondness for my state today.  Or this month for that matter.  Even as a true Minnesota girl, I don't feel like defending my state today.  See, I always think of November as a decent month because it's still not really winter.  We don't get much snow and it is usually just starting to get cold, but definitely not unbearable.  And I don't remember a time when weather played any deciding factor in our Thanksgiving travel plans. 

Not this month.  The last two weekends alone, we've endured some of the worst winter conditions we can get.  First a snowstorm with nearly 10 inches of accumulated snow and now this weekend, freezing rain and black ice.

And I can't even stay inside and drink!

When it snowed last weekend, we canceled plans with some friends and rescheduled for this weekend, the impending frozen rain unbeknownst to us.  After a nice dinner at their house, we got ready to head home about 10:30pm.  They have a four month old son who had just outgrown a size in diapers, so they sent us home with a box of diapers, which was very nice.  Aaron learned the hard way that there was black ice all along their front steps, by taking a nice biff on the steps, diapers flying everywhere.  And I, even while hanging on to his arm, slipped on the ice too.  Don't worry...we are both okay! 

Our friends were quick to offer us their guest bedroom to stay the night, and after a brief debate, we decided to just drive home very slowly.  Our dogs were home and hadn't been outside since 3pm that afternoon. 

Long story short, what is usually a 25 minute drive home, ended up taking us nearly 4 hours.  FOUR!  We were home safely and in bed by 2:30am.  The first two hours were just us driving slowly, watching cars around us skid everywhere, waiting for cars that would get stuck going up a hill or skidding through stoplights.  While most of this driving is out of any driver's control, I am thankful Aaron handles these conditions very well.  Because I don't. 

The other two hours we were only 5 miles from our house and ended up getting stuck in a line of cars behind a bus that had gone off the road and two other cars that appeared to skid around it and ended up blocking the lane of traffic.  After an hour of sitting there, someone came up to our window and told us they were closing the Hwy until a salt truck could come through and they were waiting on a boom truck to pull the bus out, which could be about 4 hours.  We weren't going anywhere for a while. 

Meanwhile, Schrambino had been moving around like crazy.  He must have sensed my adrenaline pumping with all the excitement and wanted in on the action, because I swear he was doing jumping jacks on my bladder the whole time.  May I remind you we were stuck on pure ice roads in a row of traffic with no indication of how long we'd be there. 

I had no idea when we took those infant diapers that they would actually come in handy on our drive home. 


You heard me.

And that's all I am going to say about that....

Ahem.

Eventually, a fireman came to our window and told us if we could slide backwards and turn around we could turn onto a side road to get back to the highway, which by then had been salted.  And about 20 minutes later we were home, at 2:21am. 

Suffice it to say, despite our plans to watch the Viking/Packer game today with some friends, we will not be driving anywhere today.

Be safe and drive safe Minnesotans.  It's going to be a looooong winter.  And to the rest of you...probably best to wait until next spring or summer for a visit.

It Happens Every Day...

There are few sure things in life, but one sure thing is that every day, no matter what, the sun will rise and the sun will set.  It happens every day.  Sometimes they are boring and sometimes they are spectacular. 

Wednesday's sunrise was spectacular. 

I am not a fan of "fall back" daylight savings this time of year because I end up driving to work in the dark and driving home from work in the dark.  I'm a light person.  I like light.  But days like yesterday morning make up for some of those dark drives when I wake up to a sunrise like this one. 

Can you believe I actually had enough time in the morning to take some pictures before I left for work?

Probably because I've been going to bed at 9pm every night this week, so come morning...I have been bright eyed and bushy tailed. 

Granted I was still in my pajamas and standing on our deck. 

I played around with a few settings on my camera to take these pictures, but these are all straight out of the camera shots.  No post editing. 

I normally like using color saturation to edit photos, because I'm a color person.  I like color. But I didn't do a thing to these!  This was all Mother Nature.

I'm glad that at least once, I was awake enough to soak in one daily sunrise on a November weekday morning in Minnesota.  And even with a nice camera with fancy settings, it was still difficult to capture the grandeur of a beautiful sunrise.  But at least I tried.

A Big Belly and a Broken Finger

I haven't posted in over a week not because I have absolutely nothing to write about, but rather because with Aaron's broken finger and my growing belly, productivity has dropped around here.  Once two able bodied people, we've recently found ourselves appreciating the ability to perform simple daily tasks that we used to take for granted, when I wasn't carrying around so much extra weight in my uterus and Aaron didn't have a mangled finger on his right hand. 

The adventures I've been writing about all summer and fall of harvesting grapes, making wine, hauling around giant vegetables, training trellises, and building things have morphed into adventures of a different nature.  As two people with relatively minor set-backs, our new "adventures" these past several weeks have been things along the lines of:

Which one of us can open that stubborn jar of applesauce?

How can we best coordinate buying, bringing home, and unloading a 44 lb of dog food when Aaron can only use one hand and I can't lift a bag anymore. 

How long will it take for us to move all of the wine equipment out of the garage where I normally park my car since neither of us are in a position to move things around?

Which one of us can more easily carry the laundry basket down to the laundry room?

These are tasks we've never thought would take so much time and thought for the two of us to accomplish together.  Two months ago, we were moving the huge stainless steel crusher/destemmer in and out of the chicken coop with ease, and today it takes two of us to carry an oversized laundry basket into the basement. 

The other big milestone for Aaron this week was that he actually went to the barber to get his haircut. Yes, Mr. DIY has been cutting his own hair since college when he discovered a pair of clippers and thought "hey, I can do this."  Now without full use of his right hand, he didn't feel comfortable doing it this time. I offered to help, but the last time I helped him, well....let's just say he may have gotten a big chunk shaved off his head an hour before we were to be at our friends' wedding.  Oops!  He politely declined my help and drove himself to Great Clips, actually paying for his first hair-cut in over a decade. 

I think we hit bottom when we dressed up for Halloween and I couldn't bend over to tie my own shoes. I had to ask my cast-clad husband to do it for me. 

"Can you pull it a little tighter?  You made the loop really big."

"Well, I can't get the lace any tighter with this splint on my hand."

"Well just see if you can double knot it then."

"Okay, okay...just let me do it."

This was a real conversation, folks.  I don't make this stuff up!  This is what things have come to at the Schram household.  And you wondered why I haven't posted in a while! 

Speaking of Halloween, in true Schram form, costumes were decided on and thrown together hours before we headed out to a party.  We managed to throw together two costumes using items from our closets.  Aaron played up his built-in cast costume and decided to go as the Allstate Mayhem guy.  You know that guy from the commercials that is always getting into accidents or creating them and always has bandages all over him. 

And I played up my built-in costume and went as a beer belly, basically just wearing my pre-pregnany jeans that don't fit and an old tank top to try and make my belly look like a beer gut.  And just in case people didn't get it, I strung beer cans from my belt.  I felt so classy. 

The good news is Aaron got the pin taken out of his finger today!  It's still very swollen and fractured, but it is on the mend and he'll be going to physical therapy starting next week.  I've taken advantage of this "down time" since Aaron's been under doctor's orders not to work outside or in the garage while his finger is healing.  We've been able to do some non-physical things like talk about the design and build out for an addition to our house and winery.  And more imminently, trying to make a decision of what we are going to name this little boy who will be making his appearance soon! 

Speaking of our little boy (don't you love my segues today?), the highlight of this week was when I got to do an impromptu 30 week ultrasound and walked away with this 3D picture of our little bugger.  I have been staring at our precious babe and beaming ear to ear for the past two days straight. 

I think he's going to look like his daddy, what do you think?