Oh My Oh Me

Minus 12 degrees and a little wind when we pulled out at 6:30am—this is a photo of the roads all the way to Billings.  At least the driving lane was mostly dry pavement.  Tonight coming home was an all new story!  Both westbound lanes were mostly clear on I90 but the wind, oh my, the wind.  Snow was blowing everywhere and it was all Michael could do to keep that little Jeep on the road.  Al and Kelly, don’t ever think about driving that Jeep on snowy roads, Jeeps don’t do well and that is an understatement!!!  We are used to heavy diesel pickups on snowy roads and we can go anywhere without chains, not in a Jeep! 

When we got back to Big Timber Nat’s front doorway into the house wasn’t useable, there was a 3 foot drift in front of the door.  We used the side door into his horse shoe pitching building to retrieve Emmi.  Nat tried his best to get his son to spend the night and try to get home in the daylight but nope, his son wasn’t listening. 

The Boulder road was fine, the snowplows had been over it recently and it didn’t seem as if the wind was blowing as strong as it had been out on the freeway.  Again, when we got to our driveway, it was a whole nother story!  The wind had blown at some point today and our 1/2 mile driveway was one big drift and remember, it is very uphill.  With chains on the little Jeep, we barely made it up the driveway—we pushed ahead, came to a complete stop, backed up, pushed ahead again—it probably took us 20 minutes to come 1/2 mile.   I am having a BIG glass of wine after that trip!  One side of our driveway is down into a very steep ravine and I thought we were going over several times and so did Emmi! 

OK, enough weather, on to Michael’s doctor’s appointment.  The rheumatologist thinks Michael may have some systemic process going on—more of his joints are tender than even Michael thought.  They took 9 tubes of blood today, countless x-rays and he is to have a MRI of his hands soon.  The doctor also put Michael on a malaria drug—supposedly it helps certain auto-immune type diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis.  So, again we wait. 

We checked out Ipods at Best Buy, rumor has it Santa may bring me one.  Had a real Geek waiting on us—he at least knew exactly what he was talking about! 

A very long day but we are snug inside looking forward to turkey (not Michael, he doesn’t like turkey, eats it only one day a year)!