Slip Sliding Away

In October this year we acknowledged the 20th anniversary of moving into our home after seven months of living in Rhinelander while waiting for this home to be built. The house has been wonderful for these two swiftly moving and incredibly happenstancical decades. But we were contemplating a new roof for the house because we had heard such nice things about metal roofs - ie - 1. The snow slides off them instead of piling up and forming ice dams under the shingles. Each winter Bing has had to shovel heavy snow off the roof to avoid the dreaded ice dams that cause leaks in the ceilings of homes. Since we're already midway through our sixties, we're thinking it might be good to eliminate that yearly chore. 2. They last for over fifty years instead of the twenty or thirty that shingles last.

3. Bing goes up on the roof a couple of times per winter to clean the chimney of our woodburner and we thought it might be safer for him to walk on a snow free roof. 4. We have a couple of sons who goodheartedly agreed to help put the new roof on the house and Tony has a brother-in-law, Rick, who happens to have owned and operated his own roofing company for the last several years and he also agreed to work with Bing and the sons. So, in October, it all came together. For about four twelve hour days, the four strong and brave workers worked like the devil under Rick's able supervision. Rick and Tony did the "up on the roof " work and Bing and Bernie did the ground work. The weather coooperated beautifully. I helped watch Eli so that Carmen wouldn't have too many kids at the day care and I fed the workers. Everything went really well and they came out with exactly the right amount of metal ordered and a price for the completed job that was only half of what it would have cost for a hired company to do it. We've had quite a bit of snow and cold already this winter and Bing and I have been waiting for the snow to slide off. It just seemed to be staying up there and accumulating. Then today the temperature got up to 38 and the avalanches began. The temp is supposed to go down to -11 tonight so I hope all the snow comes down and we can begin again with a clean slate, that really isn't slate. The pictures show the snow free roof and the roof today as part of the snow has descended. Maybe Santa's preliminary workers are in charge of cleaning roofs before the old guy gets going and they'll just keep enough snow up there for the landing of the sleigh.