Jack’s guest blog this week tackles marriage in a snowstorm

The  snow storms of the last few weeks have confined us both to the shop as the campus location of Wendy’s day-job has been closed, along with many other businesses in town. Recently I checked in with our vet, Saint Beth,  and her chiropractor husband TNB, newlyweds also snowed in. TNB (his real name is Brandon) said that, with both his and his wife’s practices closed: “I’m awaiting orders on what we will build, move, clean, or restore next.”

Amen, brother.

With no hiding place I have had to suffer the full glare of my wife’s ever more frenetic plans. Floors have been scrubbed, shelves re-positioned, questions about how (or why) we do (or don’t) do certain things (in certain ways) asked. While it certainly helped that we had very few customers for the same reason we were trapped, what didn’t were the frequent phone calls from folk asking to us to take in freezing stray kittens – – –

Our good friend ‘Saint’ Beth’s animal hospital was also snowed in and she had 8 kittens that needed somewhere warm and safe so they were added to our own 4 kitty employees. Add up the litter tray and feeding requirements!

12 cats and kittens chasing each other over and through the shelves can scatter an awful lot of books. So I imagine you might be getting a picture of the general scene now? Book replacing, shelf re-positioning, floor scrubbing, picture re-hanging, kitten boxes, phone calls about stray cats and all.

Meanwhile the cafe did (mostly) manage to operate as usual thanks to our 4 wheel drive truck that managed to get chef Kelley in from her house each day, but that quickly became an emergency feeding center for the elderly and infirm within delivery distance. Kelley and Wendy delivered meals three days running.

There were times when it was a relief to go out and shovel snow, I tell you. But weather forecasts for next week are good, so we’re all looking forward to better times. And even in the midst of all this chaos, we still managed to have two Friday concerts and adopt out three cats.

It’s not so bad…..