WINDING UP

This will be my last Mainely blog for this year.

The 26th of December was my Christmas with my family, those who were able to be here.
I am delighted to say, all three children with their spouses, and four of the busy grandchildren came. Missing were the married grands with their little ones, Aidric, Logan, Liem and Dominic. It would have been wonderful to have them here, but understandably it is a logistical nightmare to travel with one and three year olds, especially the day after a Christmas celebration. For one thing, kids don't usually take kindly to being taken away from their new Christmas toys.

Last night the storm moved in. THE storm which has dumped the white stuff all the way from North Carolina to Caribou, Maine. Monday is trash day in my community so I did a bit of shoveling by the garage door in order to take out the bags. There was a foot of snow right by the garage door, but worse than that there was a drift of about 30 inches just beyond it. I put on my old 9" Bean "Ladies' hunting boots" which I haven't put on for about five years. These are not the "Bean Boots" with rubber soles and leather tops, these are heavy treaded, all leather stompers. I wasn't sure I could bend my ankles enough to get them on. Great boots. Anyway, it is still snowing and blowing as I write this, but the "ground crew" will take care of the rest out front, and my very nice neighbor has offered to shovel off the patio.

This is Maine and we get these wild storms a couple of times every year in a good year.
This is our first major storm this season so we shouldn't complain. But the same people who were saying "I'll never complain about winter again" as the temperatures soar toward 100, are now saying "I'll never complain about the heat in August again." I try not to complain about weather. It's a real waste of brain power. Every year someone forgets how to negotiate our narrowed slippery roads and winds up in a tree. Every year some one goes off train on their sno-machine and ends up in a drift far from civilization. But today there was an accident at one of the ski resorts that no one expected. A lift cable slipped the pulley and dumped a lot of people twenty to thirty feet down the side of the mountain. One new commentator said there was a lot of fluffy snow which made their landings a little softer. Tell that to the people who ended up in the hospital with injuries.
When you land on the side of a mountain chances are you are going to suffer some pretty serious injuries as well as a mental trauma. How to spoil a great Christmas holiday!

I wanted to give a very local newspaper to someone and called for a subscription. The subscription office is in the Philippines. Nice people, I am sure. But they sent the wrong paper (they are a subscription factory) and when I called to straighten it out, I could barely understand the phone persona (a man) and he could not figure out how to handle it. He gave me a number to call, when I told him he was not effectively dealing with the issue. That number took me back to the Philippines to another thickly accented person, female, who also could not straighten it out. She said, "Someone will contact you within 24 hours." I said, "I expect to hear from someone withing 30 minutes." End of story. I mean, end of story. No one has called and it is now two hours later. "This is the most inefficient order service I have ever dealt with. Just cancel everything and I will buy the paper and mail it to her." and when they hung up - both of them - said, "Thank you for subscribing to Portsmouth Herald." I fairly screamed, "I did not subscribe to Portsmouth Herald! I will not pay for Portsmouth Herald. Do not deliver Portsmouth Herald!" I hope the call was monitored for quality control.

So, maybe next year. From Scarborough, Maine Janice Major Happy 2011.