Omaha Snowpocalypse 2026, Part II

 So, we got nearly a foot of snow. I don't know exactly how much because of drifting. But it was a lot. 

I fell asleep in the mid-afternoon hours on Thursday; it was halfway planned and halfway not. My sleep schedule has been very weird, and it gets weirder when I have what I like to call "unplanned" time off. When my list of responsibilities thins out, my body's need for rest takes over. It was not snowing when I fell asleep.

By the time I woke up, a little more than two hours later, there was already probably two inches or so on the ground and structures. Daisy was just getting off work for the day and every time we looked out the window, the accumulation was worse -- and unrelenting. 

We had dinner, watched the new episode of Starfleet Academy, and looked out again. It wasn't stopping.

We finally went back to bed around 11 -- it was still coming down quite hard. Everything was covered. I could not tell where our yard and driveway ended and the street began. The main road (which we can see from our house) was also covered, and any traffic on it was slowed to a crawl. 

And then I went to sleep. 

When I awoke in the morning, it was bright and sunny -- not a cloud in the sky -- and there was nearly a foot of snow on the ground. On the roof of our back porch, which I can see clearly out my office window, the drifting made it hard to calculate exact amounts. There was about 5-6 inches at the edge of the roof, where the winds would hit it and make it drift the most, to nearly a foot where the roof meets the side of the house. In the driveway, it was about the same, with a lot higher totals closer to the house than to the road.

I wanted to get up and shovel it immediately -- I have far more energy when I first wake up than when I do in the mid-afternoon and evening hours, when I tend to crash out. Daisy is the opposite; she wants to wake up slowly and peacefully, get up, and get something to eat before she feels like a person again. On my days off, that is not me -- I'm the kind of guy who wants to roll out of bed, heavily caffeinate himself until fully awake and energetic, and then be go-go-go until the afternoon hours, when it's time to retreat back to my cave for hibernation. When we run errands on weekends, Daisy never wants to do it when I want to. I want to get out of the house at like 8am, do everything that needs to be done, and then be back home and done for the day by 1-2pm. Daisy would rather leave the house at 1-2pm. We're not the same at all in that regard. 

Someone once asked me if I'd benefit from a really early first-shift working schedule, like a 5am to 2pm or something like that, and I laughed and said absolutely not. I am naturally wired to be this way; if you were to put structure around it, it would become work and would become a prison, and I would hate it. 

It's things like this that make me wonder if I'd ever actually write professionally if I were suddenly able to do so, freed of all other responsibilities and jobs. I don't know what my answer is -- because when the hobby becomes a profession, it becomes work, and I am very opposed to work. 

We did, eventually, shovel the driveway. We were helped by the sun, which was warm enough (despite below-freezing temperatures) to melt off a good bit of the bottom half of the driveway and part of the sidewalk. It maybe took us an hour to fully shovel everything. The worst part was the stubborn accumulation and ice right up against the garage door, where the sun never hits. That was tough, and required liberal application of ice melt to get it to break up and burn away. 

The rest of the night was uneventful; we came inside and showered, then ate dinner, and I started getting really, really tired -- like the shoveling had sapped all my strength. I didn't and hadn't felt like that even before dinner, but I certainly felt like it afterward. I had to force myself to stay awake and pay attention to the last ten minutes of The Pitt, although even now I'm not sure I actually remember what happened. We finished it, I took my plates out to the kitchen, gave Daisy a kiss, and five minutes later I was in bed. 

This was 6pm-ish. The sun had barely set. I went dead to the world and was out, sleeping harder than I have slept in recent memory.

Understand, of course, that it is difficult for me to get really good, really deep sleep. I struggle with it on a daily basis. I have mentioned this here before in the past -- it is a rarity for me to get more than 3-4 hours of sleep at a time anymore, even when I'm completely physically and mentally exhausted. My body and circadian rhythms are used to shift work; they're used to sleeping a few hours where and when I can and then being back up and at it for the next long slog of whatever is ahead of me. The last time I slept for a very long stretch was last fall when I accidentally drank NyQuil instead of DayQuil, and it essentially put me into a coma for about 18 hours. 

I'm exaggerating a bit there, but it really was like eight hours of solid sleep, awake for an hour, another three hours of sleep, awake for an hour, repeat until it was all out of my system. It basically burned most of a weekend and made me a zombie for the time it didn't burn. 

This is partially why I avoid NyQuil unless absolutely necessary, but will drink DayQuil like water when I'm sick. There's too much daily bullshit I have to deal with to be able to sleep for long stretches of time like that.

Anyway.

The first time I awoke, it was very dark. Daisy was in bed next to me and she'd just turned on the night light (a small booklight we keep on the bedframe). Mable was curled up next to me at my hip. I started to reposition myself to get comfortable and Daisy made sure to tell me Mable was there so that I wouldn't disturb her or fling her off me like a slingshot when I rolled over. I only have a vague recollection of all of this, and passed back out. 

When I next awoke it was an hour or two later. Daisy was dead asleep next to me and no cats were to be found anywhere. I got up, finally, and tried hard to wake myself enough to function. I had laundry to do and some other light around-the-house duties to accomplish. It was around 1am.

By 3:30 or so, I texted Daisy to let her know I was going to lay back down for a bit to see if I could get some more rest -- and that if I wasn't awake by the time she got up to make sure she got me up. We had plans for Saturday that we didn't want to alter. I watched some Tiktok videos for a bit and then, when I felt myself dozing, turned it off and slipped into sleep in my chair.

What happened next was truly terrifying.

I dreamed that I was downstairs at my desk working, I had my music on, and it was any normal night. My phone lit up with a text message from my mother, saying that my dad didn't feel well. I acknowledged it mentally and made the mental note that once I was done with what I was working on, I'd pick up the phone and text her back. I had the phone next to me on my desk when I could hear my mother's voice calling my name through it, as if a call had connected without my knowledge. 

I picked up the phone and said "Mom? Mom?" trying to see if she could hear me. She could not. The phone seemed locked up, like I could not figure out how to get it working. I could hear a commotion and background noise on the call, yet the phone wouldn't let me access the call. I remember, in my dream, thinking that if I got up and went to the next room, maybe I could get a better signal or better light to look at the phone or something of that nature -- I can't recall now, of course. I walked into the kitchen and heard two loud bangs, as if someone were knocking or pounding on the door or walls in the living room. This was incredibly startling and -- in the dream -- I immediately filled with a sense of panic and dread. I walked back into the living room to see the French doors right next to my desk open by maybe six inches or so, and in the yard behind it what appeared to be a pair of leather working gloves and a set of tools that looked like bolt cutters laying in the grass.

It was at this point where my brain was like nope, you're waking the fuck up now and so I did, alone, in my chair in my darkened office, in peace and silence. According to the clock on the wall, I'd been asleep for less than forty minutes, and in that time I'd not only passed out hard but had slept hard enough to have a full fledged nightmare from which my brain had forced me back awake. I was groggy, I didn't know what was real and what was dream at the time. I immediately picked up my phone to check the cameras outside, wondering if the pounding or banging was real and I'd heard it through my dream, and to check for text messages from my mother. Of course, there was nothing, and the cameras outside showed our street and porch at night, peaceful and serene -- with a perfectly shoveled driveway and sidewalk. It took me a few minutes of panic, in real life, to realize that yes, everything had been a dream.

I tried to go back to sleep again after that, but adrenaline was coursing through my body and that wasn't really happening.

I don't know, for the record, what that dream means. I stopped trying to interpret my dreams a long time ago. I'm sure I could look it up and there would be any number of cryptic messages I could glean from a dream like that -- but, to me, it is but one of a string of nightmares I've been having recently.

I normally only have nightmares about once or twice a year. Sometimes I remember them, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I'll remember them for a few minutes after I awaken and they will fade away to the ether after that, sometimes I will remember them for years, and sometimes I will only know I had them but would not be able to provide any details or context once awake. 

Well, as of the past couple of months -- since Christmas roughly, give or take a few weeks -- I have been having 1-2 nightmares per week, instead of per year. Nothing has significantly changed in my diet, my meds are exactly the same as they've always been (and none of them are brain meds anyway), my caffeine intake hasn't really fluctuated a lot, and my stress levels are about the same as they always are. So, honestly, I don't know the cause. I don't go to sleep thinking I'm going to have a nightmare or worrying that I might -- they're just dreams and they come and go randomly. Rarely, if ever, have they ever been a concern for me. The only time I can remember having consistent nightmares was about fifteen years ago when I was trying to quit smoking, and was using the nicotine patch. I had consistent nightmares when on the patch, and apparently that's a known side effect. 

It is what it is, I suppose; I can't really do anything to control it.

Anyway.

So as the day went on, more of the snow melted and cleared, little by little. Most streets -- including ours -- are dry and completely clear. Neighborhoods and side streets are still a little iffy and have varied between some slush and sheets of solid, packed ice. How do I know this? Because I left the house today for the first time in a while. We went to see Daisy's parents for an hour or two and then made a very quick Costco run to pick up a few essentials. 

In the winter, I don't leave the house. I do not like going out in the cold and snow and ice. When it's in the 70s in winter, as it was for a few days last week, that's different. When it's not, that is a different story. Today it was in the teens, which is weather I don't like to venture out in, but I will if we have to. 

Note: the original plan for the day was for us to get up early and clean out Daisy's closet, spending the day fully reorganizing everything and making it more accessible. It's something we've wanted to do for years and has such become more of an overwhelming task with each passing month. This weekend we had nothing on the docket whatsoever and the cold and snow was keeping us indoors anyway, so on Friday we made the plan to finally tackle the closet together -- take the full day, completely disassemble it and reassemble is, sort through stuff for giveaways and to just be able to say we did it. 

However, I had to do a Walmart delivery order for this morning for bread and some other vital essentials that really couldn't wait, and the Catsitter had gotten back to us and wanted to come over sometime in the afternoon to discuss changes and timeframes for trip to NC -- as well as to meet and interact with Dolly for the first time. She had never met Dolly; she last watched our cats in October, and at that point Pete was still with us. She really liked old man Pete, and he really liked her. All of our cats really like the Catsitter. She is sweet, kind, and patient with them and they are very receptive to that -- she puts them all immediately at ease when she's there. 

So, anything we did for the day would need to be scheduled around those things. In addition to this, Daisy got up and had almost zero energy after the shoveling of the driveway, and she didn't know if she could devote herself to cleaning the closet for the full day. She also wanted to see the parents and was concerned about them as she could not reach either of them via phone. 

"If you don't want to do it today," I said, "we don't have to. It's okay. It's not going anywhere."

I am very patient with Daisy on tasks like this because I love her and because I need to be supportive. I understand how difficult it is for her and how time-consuming and stressful it is and can be for her. I have mental and physical hurdles like that too, and it can be really rough. So, if she tells me she doesn't have the capacity to deal with it at a certain time, even if we've planned to and set aside time for it, I don't push her on it -- I just shift gears and assist where I can. 

The visit with the Catsitter was fine; she got to meet Dolly and we gave her the rundown on all of the med changes and routine changes for foods and the like. We also had to inform her, sadly, that Hank's bad eye has clouded over again -- over the course of about 24-48 hours -- and he's back on the antibiotic drops and saline for the foreseeable future. 

So, there's that. That was the story of the Omaha Snowpocalypse 2026. I doubt we're done with snow; there's already some rumblings about snow/rain/ice later in the week making an appearance again, but, we shall see.

Onward.