The End of an Era

Okay, that's an awfully portentous title for what is actually not that big of an announcement: I'm going to buy a clothes dryer.

Some of you may not have been aware that I don't have one, but I don't. I haven't had one for about four years now. This is absolutely doable in New Mexico, where it's sunny and dry almost all year. Even in the winter, the sun is strong enough to dry clothing on the line during the more-limited daylight hours.

Easy line drying in the summer.

Except not always. 

Several times a year, we have weather that makes it very difficult to get clothing dry outside for a week or so. Sometimes that's because of rain. Sometimes that's because of snow or ice. There is also the incredible wind in the spring, which can be strong enough to actually rip the clothing where the clothes pins hold it to the line. 

An example of a winter clothesline.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the best days to hang clothes outside. Should I hang them on the pasture clothesline, which is more exposed to sun and wind, or the backyard clothesline, which is surrounded by a board fence for protection from the wind, but where the woodsmoke drifts in the winter? Also if I have to work that day, can I get them hung up before I leave for work, or should I leave them for A. to hang when he gets back from the bus run? And if I leave them for him, will they have enough time to dry or will I end up having to hang them around the woodstove to get all the way dry overnight? Which clothes are the ones I should wash first? Who's out of pants? Who has a uniform that has to be dry by a certain day?

It was all starting to contribute too much to my mental load, which feels kind of heavy most days anyway at this stage of my life.

So, one day while I was sitting at work, looking at the weather forecast and thinking about all these things, I decided that the time had come to buy a clothes dryer and silence this continual mental plotting.

This will most certainly not be the end of my line-drying our clothing. I will still line-dry most of the time, even in the winter. But it's a nice thought that when there is literally two feet of snow on the ground, I will not have to put on my snow boots and dig a path to the clothesline to hang laundry.

Luxury, indeed.

Snapshots: So Much Snow

First we had a brief little blizzard on Monday afternoon that only dropped a couple of inches. Enough for a very pretty sunrise while I was on my way back from dropping off the eldest kid at his church confirmation class.

Sparkly.

The big storm started Wednesday night. The wind was howling all night, which meant some impressive sculpted drifts. I woke up to this on Thursday morning.

The autumn window decorations my sister brought us seem out of place in this scene.

It kept snowing and snowing, for two days. Because we knew this storm was coming, our school was online Thursday and Friday*. One boy's teacher told them they could build a snowman for extra credit.

Done.

The snow finally stopped around 2 p.m. on Friday. It's hard to say exactly how much we got, because of all the drifting, but at least a foot. It was heavy, wet snow, too. All of our vehicles were snowed in in the driveway. There was a funeral scheduled at church on Saturday morning, for which I was supposed to be taking care of the church, so I started digging out the Honda.

I shoveled for half an hour or so before calling on my crew to take over.

Many hands make light work, right?

Well, maybe not light exactly, but lighter.

A. came out at the end to finish shoveling out to the road. It hadn't been plowed, but a couple of trucks had been down it already, so there were some tracks to follow. 

Tracks in the morning light. You'd better not try this in a low-clearance vehicle, however. That ridge in the middle was at least a foot high.

And if you want to go the other way out of our gate, too bad.

Saturday morning featured a lovely sunrise as the sun rose in a clear sky over the snowy pastures.

Wintery.

Also frozen water troughs that needed to be broken out.

I used a shovel (and wore A.'s boots).

The sheep will eat snow, but they wanted their hay.

A. actually drove me to the pavement on the main road--only about a quarter mile--which was completely cleared, just to make sure I didn't get stuck. Then he walked home and I brought one of the boys with me to church for the funeral. He was altar server, and also helped me shovel out the church.

Thankfully, the village plow guy had mostly plowed the front of the church clear, so we just had to do a little shoveling in the front. Then I shoveled a path from the sacristy around to the front door of the church, so our priest could process down the aisle.

I made it only one shovel-width, so they had to be careful not to go off the path.

Despite the wintery weather, it is still autumn.

Pumpkin and apricot leaves in the snow.

There you have it! My (extra-snowy) life, snapshotted.

* We don't typically have school on Fridays, but we had to make up for Election Day, which the state of New Mexico this year required be a day off for every school in the state.