Things were relatively dark when Molly and I woke up the next morning. It was daytime and the sun was up, as there was some natural light coming in through the window above our bed. As I looked up though, I could tell that the blizzard was still raging outside. I could hear the wind blowing and while the sun was up, the clouds were obscuring it from view. Most of the sunlight that reached the Earth around Columbia Falls, and wherever else this blizzard was, was being heavily filtered by the storm clouds.
"Ungh," Molly grunted as she looked out the window, "It's still going."
"The weatherman said it would go through today and into tomorrow," I sighed and sat up.
"So much for school the rest of this week," Molly gave a somewhat depressed sigh, "Do you think they'll be okay?"
"Who are they?" I wondered.
"The kids," Molly answered, "Megan, Veronica, and the other kids that go to the Elementary School."
"I'm sure they're all fine," I replied, "They all likely made it home safely and are probably still there. Veronica with Tabby and Dave... Megan is probably giving Officer Barnes and her grandmother all she can handle."
"What about her mother?" Molly then wondered, curious.
"Officer Jenkins... she's probably on duty by now," I sighed, "Or on her way..."
"But the drifts were taking over the roads yesterday afternoon and evening! How could she get to the station?" Molly gasped.
"Remember that they are in town," I sighed, "They might be a bit more active in plowing the major in town roads and salting them or things like that... and the buildings all tightly together will probably form a bit more of a shield for many of the in town streets."
"What if it's worse then that can do...?" Molly asked, "Mrs. Fitzpatrick told me that she remembered a blizzard that shut down the entire city in the seventies! What if this one is on that scale?"
"If it's that bad, Officer Jenkins has either called into the station, or to Officer Howard's home phone and reported that she was unable to get out," I told her, "in any case, I'm sure she is fine... as are all the other kids that you teach and interact with in the school."
Molly nodded and slowly got up. She made her way to the dresser where our clothes were all neatly folded up.
"Will you be able to wear your normal clothes or will they do something that requires you to go in?" Molly asked.
"Since Officer Barnes and I have been on the DARE shift, we'd only be "on call" for days like this," I answered, "and will be dependent on the circumstances... based on the wind out there, I don't think I'll be going anywhere today... and if this lasts through tomorrow... I'll be home until next Monday."
"I see," Molly nodded, and then tossed me a pair of shorts to wear, "that might be good then... as we're going to need to do a load of laundry soon."
"Probably several loads, not all of our cloths are the same color and some, like my uniforms, are made from different materials then our normal cloths," I corrected.
I carefully pulled the shorts up and fit my tail through the hole in the back. I stood up to see Molly pulling up a pair of shorts that had made for her measurements as well. For the moment, neither of us were wearing a shirt, but based on my angle, all I could see were the orange and black stripes of her back. Even with the coldness of the blizzard outside, our cabin was still heated to a comfortable temperature. That combined with our fur meant that we didn't need a lot of heavy blankets to stay warm. Simple bedsheets was all that we needed cover wise at night. And as such, and to minimize the itching of cloth against fur, we both tended not to wear clothes while we slept.
"Picky, picky, picky," Molly snickered as she pulled a shirt down and covering her top half.
I then moved to pick out a shirt that matched the shorts I'd been given wear. I'd just pulled it over my head when I heard Molly give a startled gasp from the bathroom.
"Hey! Why isn't this switch working!?" Molly spoke from the bathroom door area.
I quickly pulled my shirt down and rushed to the area where Molly was flicking the light switch on and off. There was a little light in the bathroom, but that was coming in from the round forward facing window in the roof of the cabin. And as I arrived there, my body blocked that out, making the bathroom look a lot darker.
"It's not working!" Molly spoke, "Did we loose all power or is the bulb dead?"
It could just be a bad bulb, which Molly and I were more then tall enough to replace without a stepladder. But because of the blizzard, it would be best to check. I made my way to the guest bedroom, which was just across the hall from the bedroom Molly and I shared and checked the lights in that room. No luck. I then moved to check the lights in our bedroom, and there I didn't even get far enough along to checking the lights. My eyes fell on the clock that Molly and I had on a small stand beside our bed on Molly's side. The display was black. It didn't show the present time and it wasn't even flashing "12:00". It was simply out.
"I think the power went out over night," I said slowly to Molly, "the wind probably snapped a power line somewhere... somehow..."
Molly's response was simple.
"Nuts."
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The day and much of the next went extremely quietly for Molly and I. Our power remained out, and dealing with that was the most important thing to deal with. But again, it was not something were weren't prepared for. Since our cabin's heating system wasn't dependent on the main power grid, the cabin itself was still heated, but our garage wasn't. So, we moved the food in our refrigerator to the garage. Our meat would largely keep in there until the power could be restored. Some eggs and diary goods would also do well enough in the unheated garage. Though, going out into there gave Molly and I slight shivers as we moved in and out between the heated cabin and the non heated garage. But once that was done, I was sure our food would hold out until power had been restored.
Officer Howard never called our cabin over the course of the Thursday and Friday. I assumed that this meant that things were well enough in control in town that he didn't need to bring in Officer Barnes and I. While our normal phone line had seemed to go dead with the main electric power, Molly and I did share a cell-phone... though Molly was the one who normally carried it... and Officer Howard never called that phone. I knew he had the number as it was the only number I could give him until Molly and I got Bandhavgarh Cabin. After that happened, the cabin's main number was simply one of two numbers Officer Howard would have a chance of reaching me at.
Because Officer Howard never called me in, the only time the cell-phone rang was in the late afternoon on Thursday when Tabby called again. It was at about the same time that she had called the previous day to let Molly know that school on Thursday was canceled. I was busy checking various windows to make sure the blizzard wasn't blowing any snow in through those cracks and happened to be upstairs when the cell-phone rang.
"I got it!" I called down to Molly, who I had left reading in our living room. I then answered the phone to learn it was Tabby, "Hello."
"Hello, George, Tabby, here," came Tabby's voice, "you and Molly doing okay?"
"We're doing fine," I answered, "slightly concerned over the fact that our power is out, but we're managing. How are things up with you? Did your power go out?"
"Yeah... Dave's already made some calls," Tabby responded, "apparently a tree branch from a cottonwood that had been planted as part of a rancher's "decorating" of his property had a branch blown off by the wind and weighed down by some of the snow that was on it. It caught a power line strained by the wind already and the line snapped... thought the power company won't be going out until after this storm stops and the roads are cleared... so right now, it looks like we won't have power until Sunday afternoon at the earliest."
"Do you know about in town?" I wondered.
"As far as I know, power in town is still on," Tabby told me, "it's just us out in our area outside of town that are having to deal with no power."
"I see," I nodded, though Tabby couldn't see that, "I take it that then that things haven't improved enough to have school tomorrow..."
"Correct," was Tabby's response, "this weather could put cars off the road... the last thing anyone would want is to have a bus off the road."
"Yep," I told her, "I'll let Molly know we have another snow day tomorrow."
"Good... though on the plus side, it looks like things will start to ease up tonight and die off sometime tomorrow," Tabby finished.
"And then we all get to begin digging out," I commented.
And that turned out to be what happened. Molly and I made it through the blizzard as it came down alright as we stayed inside and out of the biting winds and blowing snow. Around noontime on Friday the wind began to subside. About an hour later, the amount of snow falling from the sky began to decline and Molly and I could see patches of open sky to the north and west of us. The storm was finally moving away. By about three thirty, the wind was nothing more then a dull breeze and the snow had stopped coming down.
The first thing that Molly and I wanted to do was to check the television to see what our local news would have to say on the blizzard as the end of it was finally in sight, but our power was still out. So obviously we couldn't do anything of that nature. That left only one thing to do, begin digging out.
"Will you want anything, George?" Molly asked me as I began slipping the heavier jacket that had been made for my present size.
Inside the house, the jacket was way to warm for me with my fur, but I figured I'd be outside for a while and there the jacket would probably be just enough.
"No, I'll be okay," I answered her as I moved to nuzzle her briefly and then headed for the stairs. I would try to get out of the cabin as quickly as I could before I overheated in the jacket.
"Do you want any help?" Molly inquired.
"We only have one snow shovel," I told her, "Unless you want to go there and paw at the snow... or use a garden trowel... I don't think there's much you can do. Just stay warm. I'm only going to try and clear out a path around our front door and such."
Our front door was completely blocked by snow. My best guess was that the blizzard had only dumped about one foot of it down on us, but the the fact that wind had been blowing hard as part of it, the snow drifted, and in some places the drifts were three or four feet high. I was tempted to go out the garage door, which lifted straight up, but as I turned to go through the laundry room, I found that there was no large drift around the back of our cabin. The cabin had acted as a sort of wind block in that area and the ground in our backyard and going into the trees was largely free of drifts, and once among the trees, the snow's distribution was more evenly spaced.
I collected our snow shovel from the garage and then double backed to go out our back door. The only spot there that had collected a lot of snow had been the pool that we had set up some time after Molly got her teaching certificate and was able to afford it. It was far enough away that the wind was able to pick back up again after going over or around our cabin. Luckily we had placed sufficient weight in the bottom of the pool to keep it from being blown away by the wind, but the cover to it wasn't as strong. As I went to go around the cabin, I looked in to see the plastic cover buried in the pool by a lot of snow that had fallen or been blown into it by the blizzard. It would mean that Molly and I would need to drain it again when it came time to fill the pool with water to endure the summer heat...
Which would probably big for Molly's comfort. By the time summer arrived, Molly's pregnancy would be close to "term" and she would be rather round around her middle. Something to cool her off in that heat would be of great help to her then. Draining it first, though, would be to make absolutely sure that the water that Molly, Megan, or myself swam in then would be clean.
Once I got to the front side of the cabin I began to dig out a path, starting at the garage door. The outer part of the drifts there had been crusted over as the wind blew all the snowflakes together, but once I'd gotten through the outer crust, the snow was fairly light and easy to move. At least for me it was. I didn't know how it would be for the humans of Columbia Falls. I tossed each shovel full over my shoulder and into a spot next the cabin and where I walked through to get to the front area of it. I knew that that area wasn't an area that would be plowed when the city or the county got plowing these back roads... or whether or not a private citizen would plow it. That way I wouldn't have to shovel any space twice.
I saw no plow activity as I shoveled around the front of our cabin. That was probably something to be expected though. The blizzard had been large and only just ended in the Columbia Falls area. They were probably mapping out areas for what needed to be plowed. What needed it the worst, what would require people moving their vehicles off of the streets to be plowed, and what where the "snow routes" that had to be cleared. I didn't expect the actual plowing to really begin until the coming evening or even the next morning. I merely kept shoveling out a path that could be followed.
Once I got to the small porch area where the front door to our cabin was, I began a more concentrated effort to make sure the porch area was clear. And at that point, I was close enough to the gassy area between our cabin and the fence that separated the lawns around our cabin and one of the pasture land that was for the cattle that Frank Rhoer and Molly's cousins were raising for us. That greatly reduced the amount of trips back and forth between where I was shoveling and where I was putting the snow that I had shoveled. As I cleared the area around the front door and enabled it to be opened without being pushed through a ton of snow... a slight exaggeration maybe, but... Molly appeared at the front door.
"Okay, George, time to switch roles," she announced.
"Huh?" I turned back to her.
"You've been out here shoveling for an hour," Molly answered, "Go inside and warm up, and give me your jacket. It is my turn to shovel for a bit... I won't be out for too long, as the sun is starting to go down. Once it's down, I'll come in. We can finish the shoveling tomorrow."
I turned to her for a moment, but before I could say anything she spoke again.
"I'm putting my foot down on this, George," Molly said firmly, "You won't be giving yourself frostbite on my watch."
I did what any good husband would do in that situation. I caved.
"Yes, dear," I spoke and leaned the snow shovel against the wall of our cabin and began to take off my jacket and then handed it to Molly.
She slowly put it on and found that it was a little big on her. While I zipped the main zipper up, she pulled a bit on the sleeves to make sure that her hands weren't buried in the sleeves of the jacket. And that was largely how we shoveled out our driveway and such over the next day or so. I'd shovel for a little while and then Molly would take a turn. By about a day after the blizzard finally passed through, the roads were plowed out and the area would begin to get back to the normal routine... although Molly and I still had to wait for the power to be restored to our cabin.