Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me...

So I slugged through Thanksgiving. I was alone, which was not fun, but I kept busy, working on the German part of the B&B website and preparing for today. Today was the day I was supposed to fly to Zürich to spend a romantic weekend with my husband. He is working there, and has the cutest tiny apartment, in the middle of the city. Mimi, my helper was ready to come up and spend three days here with her husband and Max. I had the notes written up on how to cook his daily hamburger (he likes it medium rare) and had left them a nice romantic dinner of their own in the fridge. I don't travel much anymore, so preparing to leave for a few days seems like a lot of work -- well, it is a lot of work when you live in the country like we do. I made sure they would have enough firewood next to the front door, and that their bedroom, our B&B suite, was heated up 24 hours in advance so it would be cozy.

And then I woke up to this.

We have at least ten trees down that I could count, and I did not count everything, because I did not make it by foot all the way down our quarter-mile driveway. The snow is to my upper knee. I don't think it will stop any time soon. I think this might be the worst storm we've had here so far.

Paolo over at Slow Travel had warned me yesterday that it might snow today, so I looked at all of the "previsioni" I could -- and the general consensus was a little bit of light snow rain. As of right now, we have about two and a half feet and it is still coming down like mad.

Micha can't come home, either. The main autostrada he has to take is requiring either snow tires or chains, and from what I can find on the Internet, these blizzard conditions are present for a 50 km. radius of Acqui Terme. No use risking life and limb. But boy do I miss him.

I won't be able to leave for at least three or four days. I have lost electricity once already, it stayed off an hour and came back on. Satellite is out, but miraculously, DSL is working.

I have enough food and firewood to last the next days, including Mimi and Samuel's romantic dinner which I will have for lunch and dinner today.

I have enough propane to last about 10 days, so I am ok there.

In order to get our gate open so Franco can plough me out, I have to get down the hill and shovel the radius of the gate swing. I will attempt that only after the blizzard has stopped. If it is too stressful, I will not do it. I am a little nervous about injuring myself and no one knowing. So I am going to play it safe.

It is amazing how, with this property, I can get thrown back into this kind of primitive living situation. I mean, I know that within a few days, everything will be fine and I will be able to get off the property again. But not having Micha here during these moments is very trying. Even his 4x4 would not help us. For this we would need a tractor or a huge pick up with monstrous tires and chains. This is the part of living at the foot of the mountains which I find the most challenging.

Max loved it this morning, but even he is a little wary. The snow is too deep, it covers him to his chest. It took all of his strength -- which is a lot -- just to run about twenty feet.

We are inside resting now. I will post again later.