ICY UPDATE

I've had calls from friends wondering about our conditions here on "witch mountain."  Monday we did get down the mountain, did a few errands, had pizza in town, and picked up our mail.  On our return, we crawled at a snail's pace down the "slippery slope" holding our breath, made it up the hill by Red Oak, which by the way has nice gravel because it's where the president of the HOA resides, and continued past Karl's house.  But as we turned onto Clay Durrett we lost traction.  Cliff backed up slowly sliding, tried two more times to get up the hill, but all we could do is spin the wheels.  Each time he backed up, the car slid a little more toward the ditch.  The poor car has been sitting in the curve since Monday.  We carried our groceries up the hill and told the car we'd get her home as soon as we could.  Temperatures have been single numbers each night and barely hitting 20 during the day.  Cliff hasn't been able to respond to any accidents or structure fires.  Tuesday night a 3-story house burned down over on Ranger Rd. and it was very difficult for him to not be able to respond.  Any  volunteers who can get to the stations have been responding to medical and fire calls. Yesterday our neighbor from the top of the road who has a 4-wheel drive truck  took Cliff into town with him.  We have enough food and supplies but Cliff wanted to get kerosene for the heater in case we lost power and more Oreos to help us cope. We brought the big generator with us from Florida but he's been working on the carburetor so it's out of commission for now.  Temperature at 6:30 AM is 34.  It's raining and temps are suppose to reach 50 later today.  We should have some good melting and hopefully can get the car off the hill.  After the first of the year, we'll go looking at 4-wheel drive trucks.  But the biggest problem in this subdivision is the board's neglect of the roads making them dangerous.  We'll get out of Boulder Creek as soon as the Florida house goes up for sale in April.

Cherokee County Schools along with most other schools in Tennessee, Georgia, and NC have been closed all week.  Long Christmas break for the kids but more make up days in their future.

I think I have all my online Christmas shopping completed. Thank goodness for plastic and free shipping sites.  I'm late getting our Christmas cards made and mailed out.  Still have two packages here that need to be sent.   Might get out to our local "pack 'n ship" later this morning.  Max and I haven't minded being here in the house because we made a nice chicken noodle soup, had hot tea and listened to Christmas music.  She watches the birds fly to the feeders and scratch around the ground rooting for seeds buried in the snow.