38

My birthday was a couple weeks ago, so I am adjusting to being 38 years old… The CFO continues to remind me that I’m quickly closing in on 40.  How is that possible?  I remember when my parents turned 40 and it seemed like they were super old.   

My birthday celebration was pretty low-key, we went out to dinner with some friends (mmm… prime rib) and I received a lot of nice gifts including some clothes, cycling accessories, money and the CFO gave me a new lawn mower.  Being the smart woman that she is, she gave me an illustrated “I.O.U.” for it and is leaving the decision of which brand/model to buy up to me.   I must be getting old when I get excited about the idea of getting a lawn mower for my birthday!

The CFO also managed to schedule a hair appointment for herself on my birthday, and she proceeded to have them chop off enough hair for her to donate.  I prefer long hair, so this was kind of sad (and mean to do on my birthday!)…

Before

 

After 

We had a brief warm up a few days before my birthday.  The above freezing temperatures combined with a couple inches of rain  to create a lot of melting snow and surface water.  The snow berm that had built up between us and the boys to the left of us created a swimming pool in their backyard that over topped the sills of their basement windows and worked its way into their basement.  I saw them outside frantically digging on their side of the fence, so I went out and helped open up a channel for the water on our side.  The resulting stream of water was 8-10" deep and it ran for a good hour before their yard was fully drained. 

 

The water draining from the boy's house across our grass area.  The dry creek bed is still buried under 3 feet of snow, so this is route option #2 for the water.

 

This is the water flowing in the ditch between our house and the field behind us.  It is usually a dry creek bed, it only looks like this once or twice per year.

 

While the warm up and rain washed away some of the snow, we still have a large piles of it everywhere.  It was topped off last weekend when we got another 4-5 inches of snow… I heard that friends in Georgia have daffodils popping up in their yards; we can’t even see ours because of the snow cover.  It looks like we might get above freezing this weekend, so that will be an improvement.  The CFO is heading to Virginia for spring break, leaving me a week to tackle some projects.  I haven't decided which ones I will tackle, but I'm hoping to be productive.