Are We Reaching?

Well, it’s here. We’ve been waiting and waiting . . . okay, no one has been waiting, not even the skiers I know. But it is snowing, first snow of the season, and one day after I was running around in a t-shirt.

It’s worse in Denver, because they were at 80 yesterday and tomorrow morning expect to be at 14 (Fahrenheit, as good Americans). And I thought this storm was supposed to be theirs, not ours. As late as 6 p.m. yesterday, my weather report said no snow for Gunnison, with a chance of rain this morning. But I guess it wouldn’t be rain if it’s below 32 degrees.

(Kara keeps wanting to know the temperature out here, so I should move the thermometer sitting on my desk to an outside location to oblige her.)

I don’t know anyone who is ready for snow. Winter lasted so long, clear through May, and summer seemed exceptionally short. I thought maybe it was just us, trying to get a house finished and us moved, but it seems to be a city-wide sentiment.

Kara, who got married four years ago today, said she would not have been happy, four years ago, had she experienced a warm, lovely day such as yesterday, only to wake up for an unwanted white wedding. She and her bridesmaids all went barefoot for her outdoor ceremony, and she thinks her friends might have demanded shoes for a day like today.

I did not know it was snowing right away, when I got up this morning, and that is because: there are curtains on my windows. Ta-da! I had to put the curtain rods up myself, so presumably they will crash down on my head some night while I am sleeping, and I have to take one set of curtains to Gilly for hemming, and it looks like I should take the other set to work and use our heat press on the post-washing wrinkles on the other, but for one glorious (if snowy) morning I had curtains across both bedroom windows.

(Lynn likes to look out at the world; I like it to be dark when I sleep. And I would also like to say, apropos of absolutely nothing, that I become less a fan of soft-close drawers by the day. You have to tug to get them open, and then they don’t close all the way so you have to push them shut . . . I kind of think this is one of those things that everyone tells themselves we all love when really, it was a bad idea.)

I had to put up my curtains myself because I have been abandoned. It’s like some Twilight Zone episode, where every once-reliable person has vanished. Into thin air.

We’ve only heard from our contractor once since whatever day he was last here. Days after we had already done so, he offered to come out (at 9 p.m., mind you) to remove our hoses from the spigots because it was going to be well below freezing overnight. But that was it. No, “Are the hoses working out okay?” No coming out to check on the progress (or not) of the grass seed his guys scattered. No follow-up to see if the microwave arrived as promised on Oct. 2.

It didn’t arrive, of course, but Lynn got a call late yesterday saying it was in. Whether they unboxed and inspected it is still an unknown. Whether it is dented or not is still an unknown. Whether a contractor will return to install it is still an unknown. It may be up to me, Lynn and our new drill.

The drill was the impediment to putting up curtains — I didn’t know what box ours was in, and I had the sense that the battery on our existing drill was failing anyway. Which turns out to be true, as I went digging after I bought a new drill and found not just the one drill but two others, both of them probably collector’s items belonging to my dad.

So now I’ve added to our drill collection, which I’m sure qualifies me to install an over-the-stove microwave when we can’t get Dusty to return our calls.  Because that’s what service professionals do these days, I guess: not return calls.

I complained about the forever-running fan in our gas fireplace to the fireplace store last Friday, and the woman said the installer would call me back that day. I gave him until the end of Tuesday, then e-mailed one of the owners. Who has not bothered to reply.

I e-mailed, at two different addresses, the window cleaner who (theoretically) cleans our windows at work (and does a beautiful job when he actually shows up). No response from him.

Lynn was supposed to meet with our landscaper (the man Kara married four years ago today) on Friday, but he never called or showed up. She texted him again this week, and still nothing.

So I guess it’s Little House on the Prairie time, where we have to rely on our wits and skills to survive out here on our own in the wilderness. Do any of us recall the Donner party?

Here’s one positive: the HOA attorney did get back to me, and we have a go-ahead for our shed, pending a couple of easily-met conditions. Now all we have to do is get someone from the shed store to help us, and I’m not holding out big hope there, because every time I go in and inquire about sheds, they hand me a catalogue and rush me out the door. No wonder the place is for sale.

I also heard, right after I e-mailed her, from my solar installer, but what she’s reading at her end — that my panels are producing more electricity than we’re using — is the exact opposite of what my internet dashboard is showing me. She was going to look into that and get back to me, and guess what?

Outside the snow has stopped, even before we could say, “We need the moisture.” (Which we do.) The Denver meteorologist this morning, just a couple days after he reported Denver’s hottest or second-hottest September on record, said this is the earliest cold temp in 100 years of recorded history for our state capital.

Weather is weird, but not as weird as the radio silence from every service professional in the entire Gunnison valley.

Blankies at the ready, even if no one else wants snow.