Snow & Babies & Stuff

As was well broadcast yesterday, we were hit with a pretty major amount of snow here in Connecticut and other parts of the Northeast when Winter Storm Albert blew up the coast.   Because it was a coastal storm, places like Norwich got hit worse than the places in Connecticut that usually get dumped on like Litchfield and northern Windham counties.

Naturally, the snow wasn't nice enough to arrive when I had a day off and wouldn't have to worry about getting to work in the morning so I got up yesterday morning at a little after 5:00 and looked outside to see that there was a lot of white stuff out there covering the ground - including the street I live on which had yet to be plowed.  Swell.

As I live in town, getting a ride into work isn't a problem so I knew I wasn't going to have to drive in the stuff but I was still going to have to be able to get out the door as the snow was up and over the bottom of the door.  Grabbing the snow shovel - which I had been smart enough to bring into the house with me the night before - I ventured out and dug a path from the front door to what I figured to be the road.  Fortunately the snow was of the light and fluffy variety and it didn't take me long but no sooner had I finished and was starting back in the house but a plow finally came down the street and - sure as shooting - filled in the path I had just made to the roadway!  Sigh ...

Work itself was way too busy for my liking - especially considering I was flying solo as my partner lives considerably further away and she didn't relish the idea of driving in a semi-blizzard.  The first 911 call was a lady in labor with her first child and the second emergency call was for a paramedic intercept for yet another lady in labor in a neighboring town with her third child.

The little fella decided that he wasn't going to wait to get to the hospital to make his entrance into the world and was born in the back of a neighbor's car who was trying to drive the expectant parents to the hospital.  You can read the full story here at NorwichBulletin.com along with another picture of the proud parents and their brand-new son, Peter Ronald Clippinger, who was born at at 8:34 a.m weighing in at 7 pounds, 12 ounces.  In addition to the on-duty paramedic that I sent from American, one of our other off-duty paramedics was there as a member of the Franklin Volunteer Fire Department and she helped deliver Peter into the world.  (The photo to the left is credited to Khoi Ton of the Norwich Bulletin Staff.)

The rest of the day was pretty crazy and I was pretty happy to see my partner arrive around 2:00 so I could finally take a little bit of a break!  I can't remember the last time I was so happy to see 11:00 p.m. roll around!

Today involved a lot of time with a shovel as I went outside to shovel the stairs for my elderly neighbor, Elizabeth, who lives in the apartment over the garage behind us as well as trying to dig my car out of the pile of snow that my other neighbors upstairs decided to throw on it when they dug theirs out.  Apparently the art of snow shoveling is not taught in Vietnam or they're just plain rude - I've not decided which yet.

As I stood there looking at all of that snow (this picture doesn't really do it justice as you can't tell exactly how deep it is and it's the front of the house, not the back where the driveway is), I felt an overwhelming sense of dismay and fatigue.  Normally my landlords have someone to plow but there has been some breakdown in communications or something and arrangements have yet to be made so that left me with trying to figure out what to do with all of that snow!

Finally I did the smartest thing I could think of and sent a text to my friend Andrew to ask if he was going to be in Norwich today.  Luckily he was going to be in Franklin and said he'd stop by a little after noon to clear the driveway for me with the plow on his truck.  Once he arrived it took him less than 10 minutes to push all of the snow out of the way and I thanked him with half a case of Winter Warmer (left over from the dispatch party) and a bag of Christmas cookies I had baked on Saturday.  The guy is truly a lifesaver in more ways than one!  Thank you, Andrew!  

Of course it's now time to get ready to go back to work for the afternoon!  I'm hoping to get some Christmas presents wrapped tonight when I get home as I didn't do them Saturday as I decided to bake cookies instead but we'll see how that goes as I'm sure all of the shoveling is going to catch up with me at some point and I'll be very, very tired.

Hope your Mondays are going well!