Snowed Under

Not So Dashing Through the Snow

We have over a foot of snow. Hard to be 100% sure how much, but I measured over 13 inches by the back door where, perhaps the wind did not come into play. Trudging out to the barn was a bit of work, but now that my feet have made a path, the later trips should be easier.

Donna carted three bales of hay to the barn yesterday, and I've used up one so far as I gave the Boys extra last night at late feeding. I do have a little sled to get more over there should the need arise, but I certainly will not be able to do the transport of a full bale. I've used the sled in the past and it does work well, however, so if I want to take some flakes over it will be fine. Grain and water are all in the barn already, so there's no extra lugging there.

Cleaning the stalls is a problem at the moment. Again, I would normally shovel a path to the manure pile, but one little effort to clean off the back step of the house told me there is no shoveling I can do at the moment. The snow is wet enough to have a bit of weight and just moving some of it so the door to the house would open was a challenge to my body. Healing muscles in my abdomen are very sore and I definitely don't need to risk damaging anything.

So, I am stuck. Until rescue parties arrive to do some plowing, "tractoring," or shoveling, I will just have to cope.

Would you believe church was actually cancelled for today? I got a call from the choir director yesterday and an email message from the church that services were called off due to the storm. Wise move, actually. I trust God understands that sometimes humans just have to surrender to His creation. The church is in a town, so I suppose some people might have been able to walk there. For me, it would have been impossible as my driveway is impassable and my road doesn't look too great either. There might be a chance that my truck, in full four wheel drive mode might be able to get me out in a real emergency, but it might not be a pretty picture.

I remember one year when we had a storm worse than this one. My one driveway was totally drifted in. I had the other truck with a snow plow on it. I managed to clean about 30 feet of the one side of the driveway (my driveway loops in a "U" around my house with two ends opening on the road.) But then I was stuck with about 6 feet of heavy snow piled up in front of the plow. So, I started out the other driveway, plowing at angles to keep the snow from piling up in front of the blade. (No room to do that on the first side.) After about 20 minutes of that, I still had some 75 feet to the break open. I backed the truck up to the top of the little hill, dropped the plow and gunned the engine. The Dodge battering ram and I went smashing through and out into the roadway with my driveway finally open!! Thank goodness there was no one coming down the road when I broke through. It took a HUGE front end loader from the heavy equipment operators across the street to get my first driveway cleared later that day as that snow was so bad, but I had conquered one side all on my own. I felt so pleased.

Which is why all of this is so frustrating. I really do like to feel self-reliant.

On another note...solar energy. I have suddenly received, from the electric company, a set of revised invoices indicating I have over $600 worth of credit to my account since May. They have been charging me for full energy usage every month, deducting money from my bank account on auto pay, even though I have been producing more solar energy than I have been using. (Except for perhaps one month when the air conditioning ran full force).

Now I am totally baffled. They installed a bi-directional meter in May and back credited all my bills from January. I had thought, after that, that each month's bill would reflect how much energy I was producing to offset my bills. Not having paid a lot of attention to my total monthly energy usage in the past, and knowing that energy prices were soaring, I was having trouble figuring out just how much I should have been paying. When my August and usage were actually higher than the year before--when I did not have solar energy--I was really perplexed, so I started keeping closer tabs on things. But then, my medical concerns kind of took top priority and I lost momentum.

But now?? I now have a revised bill from May, showing a $600+ credit on my account. Yet, according to my bank statements, I have been paying electric bills all year. Why wasn't that credit applied to my bills? Of course all this "stuff" arrived in the mail yesterday, so with the snow and the weekend, I certainly cannot get any answers.

I am going to have a very interesting phone call sometime tomorrow trying to get this sorted out. Better yet, even if they credit me with the money on my energy bills for the coming months, the credit will just escalate as it seems a good number of those months I was producing more energy than I was using. That means the energy company owes me for the extra my system produces. Confused? So am I. *lol*