Getting Ready for Winter

I am getting ready for winter. I have a lot to do. I did one thing this weekend but an important thing. I went to Costco and bought enough toilet paper to last me until Spring. It might seem like a silly thing but trust me, there is some kind of weird thing that happens around here whenever a heavy snow is forecast: People run out to the store and buy toilet paper and water. It is weird. I might say that I dont get it except I can imagine that one time a person simply doesnt want to have to run to the store because they ran out of toilet paper is when there is a foot of snow on the ground!

So now that is done. The rest of my list is just more chores:

• Bring in the air conditioner from the bedroom window. I think I am safe and wont have need of it until next summer.
  
• Close up the upstairs bedroom. I am going to put plastic on the windows up there and also close off the vents. No point in heating it more than I have to. It didnt even occur to me to do those things last year. I hope doing that will make my heating bills a little lower.
  
• Put up plastic sheeting on all windows except the front window that the dogs like to look out of.
  
• Change the furnace filter and turn the furnace on to make sure it works. Yup, once again, I had all summer to change that darn filter and once again, I wait until the last minute :)
  
• Mow the lawn.
  
• Find the snow shovel
  
• and maybe find the ice scraper for my car. I know I wont get around to this one but I always put it on my list in the hopes that maybe one year, I wont find myself trying to scrape frost off the windshield with a credit card on the first big frost.
  

Sometimes when I look at my list, I have to remember to be grateful that I dont have nearly the preperation for winter people in the past used to have. I dont have to put up food for the whole winter. I dont have to cut and stack enough wood to heat my house for a whole winter. I dont have to do a lot of things. Yup, things could be a lot more difficult for me.