Window Winterland

Around here, for the last 48 hours, it’s been all about the weather. But: we have windows, so who cares?

Yes, our new, wrong-colored windows —

Did I tell you that? I might not have. It turns out, we had decided on forest or, in this nomenclature, evergreen, rather than dark brown, for the outside window trim. I found that in our contract. Dusty was stricken, but the windows were already on their way, and I figure the neighbors probably will be happier with the blander brown, so we’re living with the change.

— our new, wrong-colored windows arrived on Wednesday, and two men whose names we didn’t catch went immediately to work. They started on the south side, although Dusty had made it sound like that would go last due to the complexity of the trapezoid windows. But that’s where they started, and it looks great.

The timing was even better. While they were glazing (would that be correct?) those windows, Lynn was on her way home from Denver, running headlong into infamous South Park winds that were sidelining semis and pushing cars off the road. Monarch Pass was a breeze (if you will) after that, and she got home about half an hour before the snow started in earnest.

We immediately went out to the house to make a decision and give Dusty an expeditious answer on moving the laundry-bathroom wall (of course, it would have been more expeditious had I done that sooner, like a month ago), and beheld a wall of glass.

Beyond the glass a snowstorm swirled, and it was a brief preview of what it’s going to be like to be able to stand in our Good Room in warm toasty comfort with a giant picture of nature’s best shows.

The holes that didn’t yet have windows all had plastic over them, even the ones facing east, which turned out to be a wise decision, because guess which way the wind blew yesterday?

Wednesday from Lynn’s return until about 8, we got five-ish inches of snow. Then it got really warm Thursday morning, nearly to 40. Around 1:30 p.m. it started snaining — too white to be rain, too wet to be snow. It did that until about 5:30, when it finally started sticking, but oh my gosh did it remain wet.

Very early this morning Oz and I went out. He was not a happy camper, and sat with his nose against the door until I let him back in. Shoveling was like lifting cement, while overhead the sky was completely white, with intermittent flashes of lightning (not lightening, although it did cause the sky to do that as well)

I was also awake for the weirdest, tiniest power outage. There was a pop from something outside at the same time the TV went out. It also turned off the glowy lights in our kitchen, and the microwave clock, but not any other clock. The oddest aspect was that it seemed to cause any neighborhood light on a motion detector to go on and stay that way.

Lynn reports via text that she nearly got stuck getting out of the driveway this morning and that she had to drive on the wrong side of streets to be able to get to work at 6. Monarch was closed due to an avalanche, and mail trucks are late, coming around the long way to the south.

The good news in all this is that Dusty’s speedy guys got all the remaining windows installed yesterday before the snain. We are now locked out of our own house, with all openings either boarded up or glassed in. There’s an opening to the garage, but it’s padlocked, and Dusty hasn’t told us where to find the key. I hope it’s not on the ground somewhere — we’ll never find that.

But I’ll take being locked out over having that wet, soggy snow sitting on our floors. You have no idea how glad I am that all the glass went in before we got winter and spring all rolled into one. And as I debate what to do about the roof here at home and at work, I’ll leave the construction zone roof decisions to Dusty.

Right now the sun is shining (here — but not so much on Monarch, which is only rating a dark blue line rather than black on Cotrip.org, despite looking like this:

We are all of us, whether you know it or not, collectively glad that Lynn forewent the Home and Garden show in Denver. It means she drove eight hours-plus for a half-hour appointment, but better that than whiteout conditions all the way home.

Right now the sun is shining, but clouds are gathering in anticipation of the 50 percent chance of less than an inch of snow overnight, accompanied, perhaps, by wind. Doesn’t that sound like fun? And in that contrarian way we humans have, I now want it to get colder, because I like my snow light and fluffy, easy to shovel, not this cement that awaits me this morning, where it still appears to be 30 degrees.

But at least we have windows!

The project that awaits: