SNOW Is a Four Letter Word?

This afternoon when I sat down at the desk for work on my Mom's finances, my 10 Key Adding Machine had suffered Cardiac Arrest and wouldn't compute. Thinking about it, this might still be the machine we had when we moved to Florence 21 years ago. Since I can't function, mathematically, without my 10 key, we had to take an unplanned trip to Office Depot in Canon City and get a new one. It is quite beautiful and the display is much easier to read than the old one. It even has a clock and calendar and memory, if I ever decide to take the time to figure out how to use them. All I want to know is the bottom line, which I will then probably type into a Microsoft Excel file.

Unfortunately, one of the things that is keeping me away from creating quilts, is the amount of time I have to spend on handling Mom's finances. Luckily, Joe handles most of our personal and business finances and I just input the info into Quick Books and generate reports. While a major portion of my career was handling the agencies' budgets and finances, I was never good at handling my own finances, too emotionally involved. Like not acting as one's own Attorney or Doctor. Other peoples' money is like Monopoly money to me and I can handle it very logically.

But I digress!

I am posting about the snow storm we received yesterday. The storm started as rain in the late afternoon, while I was shopping in Canon City. As I started the drive back to Florence in the dark and rainy evening, it was quite difficult for me to see and I had to drive between 45 and 50 mph on Highway 50. By the time I got to the Florence turn off, it had begun snowing big, fluffy wet flakes and I nearly turned off the highway into the barrow pit before I caught myself and saw where the actual turn off was located. The snow was swirling around hynotically in the head lights and it was almost impossible to see where I was driving. Most of the time I could see a tiny bit of the white line on the edge of the pavement, and stayed on the road at around 10 to 15 mph across the hill and down the slope into the Arkansas River valley. Once into town the street lights made it easier to see to stay on the streets and find my house.

This morning it was quite cold and gray but by midday the sun came out and made everything sparkle, even though it remained cold enough for the snow to stay on the trees as well as the ground. The view as Joe drove me to Home Depot was glorious, with the sun low in the west, shining on the snowy prairie and on the mountains, below the clouds that still covered their peaks. Of course, I had Joe pull over on the verge of the highway, while I got some photos. It is a good thing for me that Joe is a patient man, since I'm always asking him to stop for a photo session.

Here is what we saw. This is the hogback and Cooper Mountain, to our north, in the Pikes Peak massif. Normally, I think of SNOW as a four letter word, but there are exceptions. In addition to being beautiful, we desparately needed the moisture. [Be sure to click on the photo, to better appreciate the effect.]