Late Snow Day

Our fluffy gray cat, Carey, came in the door trailing snow from her legs, belly and tail. It's deeper than that, but apparently kittehs don't sink as deep into the snow as I do. My knees and the cuffs of my sweater are soaked--the spots that are exposed above the boots and below the hems and cuffs on my leather coat--from trying to clear out the car and driveway to go to work. Ha. I was so optimistic then. The pic above was taken shortly after I cleared the car off good enough so that it was driveable. Now I'm an hour late to work and it's still snowing buckets out there. It's supposed to melt by 2pm today. Maybe ....

In the meantime, I guess I'll have a second breakfast. I had my first at about 6:30 this morning. I'd expected snow, so I got up early so that I could clear the way to the road and get to work on time.

That didn't work out as planned. I didn't expect it to continue snowing, or for the snowplow's efforts to be in vain. The road has to have plenty of black pavement showing for me to safely make it down the hill. Our free tires that we get from the dealership aren't all-weather tires, and they go bald preposterously fast. The pickup and the two other sedans we own are not running. Not a one. My favorite sedan needs a new starter. It goes ziiiiing! when I try to start the car. The pickup needs a new fuel pump. It'll start if I put plenty of starter fluid in the carburetor, but it'll die again right away. We changed the fuel filter to one of those new-fangled clear thingies and you can see there's no fuel getting to the filter at all. And the no-go, I mean Nova, has been down for a long time waiting for me to accumulate enough money to fix it up. I forget what expensive part it needs to have, but it's almost $600 just for the part.

In short, I'm stuck. But it's beautiful out.

The goats and chickens disagree. I fed the goats, who are staying in the barn for today to the point where they wouldn't even poke their noses out the door when I walked up with their grain. They waited for me inside the barn. The chickens sat on the stoop when I opened the door. Beatrice tipped her head sideways, took a long look at the snow, decided naaaah, and went back into the coop.

So there you have it. A snow day on March 13. Kinda nifty, but couldn't it have happened on my day off?

Not Quite a Cliche'

It's been snowing buckets. We have a pretty severe storm system passing through (actually, it's probably several storms) and the cold air is helping mitigate it a bit by having it fall as beautiful fluffy frozen stuff. When we warm up the wind will pick up and suddenly we'll have those torrential downpours that sometimes flood my office.

Please not this year, please please no flooding office this year ....

I had fun driving in it (so far--I may not drive tomorrow and call in to work (we'll see.)) I had to leave early and still ended up showing up at the same time at work as always. In my haste to depart I couldn't find my hat and gloves, so I borrowed some, which resulted in:

K driving down the slushy, snowy road in a big blue pickup truck wearing a brown cowboy hat with a tiger-eye chip band and purple sparkly gloves (no, really, seriously) listening to 80's pop on the radio in four wheel drive, bouncing on extra-tight shocks.

Did the same going home, of course. I saw lots of tire tracks in the snow fish tailing all over the place, often crossing the centerline or venturing a few inches into the ditch. Driving up our road in snow ain't for the faint-hearted, that's for sure. But me and my pickup truck did just fine, thank you very much, with Twisted Sister on the radio. Heh. I would have preferred country, but my knuckles were a little white gripping the steering wheel ....

All but finished, and begun again

I finished the floor upstairs. Well, finished might not be perfectly accurate. I have three transitions and the baseboard thingy/stuff to do. Then I'll be done. We still have to put the ceiling up downstairs, and we have to finish our front porch, but the upstairs will finally be homey again. It's a really good feeling. It'll be an even better feeling when I can sweep and mop the last of the sawdust away. I've gotten about 90% of it, but it'll keep shaking off of furniture and we'll be dusting it off of all the horizontal surfaces for a quite a while, not to mention I have to get all those bits and pieces leftover out of the house and the tools (all sawdust covered, of course) returned to their proper owner or put away. Thanks again to our friend D. for loaning us his very kewl chop and table saws.

I'm writing on the third book in the Masks series again, tentatively titled Innocence and Silence. So far so good, at least as far as I can tell. Writing in series is always a chancy proposition. There are all those details to keep track of, and there's a higher chance that the story will run away in directions that won't work either forward, backward, or worst of all, both. I'm trying not to let it distract me. The most important thing is to tell a good story, right?

Oh, and it snowed today. There's enough on the ground that the steadily rising temperatures aren't enough to melt it. I had that magical feeling waking up with everything white. I don't think that feeling will ever go away, at least as long as we're on the warm side of the mountains.

So it's been a productive, snug, brandy and hot chocolate sort of day. Tomorrow it's back again to the day job, assuming the road conditions are good enough for me to get down the hill. Right now I'd say it's probably fine, but if it keeps snowing all night or the temperature drops, turning the slushy underbelly into ice ... yeah. We'll see. If I can't make it I won't be too sad, though. I'll just spend the day writing.

First Snow

It's a beautiful evening with big, fat, sloppy snowflakes falling outside.  It's a hot chocolate with a giant marshmallow nuked on top kind of night, a writing night, a reading night.  It's a night for sitting in the living room with the lights turned out, watching the deck light reflect off of frosted leaves and buried deck spars.  

Happy first snow, everyone!

Pioneer Winter?

We had snow yesterday morning.  Yes, I said snow.  Again.  It melted right away, but still.  Are we having a pioneer winter, sort of like Indian summer, but not?  

Who came up with the term Indian summer and what's it trying to say?  I can't decide if I like the term because  I feel weird calling Native Americans Indians.  I don't think it's particularly offensive or derogatory (please correct me if I'm wrong) but it's perpetuating a historical error.  We've known better since the 1600's, folks.  Why is this Indian thing clinging on?  I'm not trying to be politically correct.  I just think it makes sense to refer to friends from India as Indians and friends from America as Americans, and to be more specific when specificity is required.  Makes sense to me.  Further, pioneer winter makes sense to me as a description because we always read about the incredibly tough winters the pioneers endured and so when we have an extra long one, I think of them.  With Indian summer, the connection isn't clear to me at all.  

I sense a Google moment coming on, but not this morning.  I have editing to do before I head in to work.

Anyway.

In writing news, I'm waiting to hear back about two short stories.  Waiting means that I'm not sending out queries or submissions, which means Kami needs a slap on the wrist.  More $$ for the INK coffers, I guess.  

In cat news, Katherine gets dropped off to be spayed tomorrow.  I suspect that she has mites because she digs at her ears, so I'll have the vet test them and clean them out if she has time while Kat is out.  You see, we learned something about Kat that makes us uninclined to just set her on our laps with a Q-tip, a few balls of cotton, a cotton square and some ear wash.  Kat walked through mortar while I was setting up to lay a tile, so I snagged her and went to rinse off her feet.  The vast majority of cats don't like this and will squirm and fight and whine and maybe snag me, and it's never been much of a big deal except with the ballistic cats.  You know the ones I'm talking about.  Well it turns out Kat is a ballistic cat.  We're talking wild thrashing, all claws splayed, danger of biting ballistic.  Thanks to my considerable experience at holding cats I was able to hold on to her but not able to do more than a cursory wetting of feet while the water was running.  I got her feet wet enough for toweling (which is a non-ballistic activity for her, apparently,) and got her feet plenty clean enough for her health.  OMG, what is it about the littlest kitties being the most insane?  I guess they have to fight extra hard to hope to break even.  Which lends me a bit more perspective on Mark's situation in Masks.

Yes, everything is wrapping around back to writing these days, which is as it should be.  I could stand to do more painting, but right now I'm working too many hours and writing comes first.  Too bad, because I'd really like to paint.  A lot.

Black Angus in the Dark Woods

I was picking through the remnants of devoured (the bulbs, by voles) tulips, making them into a nice bouquet, when The Sea of Unconditional Love alerted me to ... are those Newfoundland dogs?  No?  Black ponies?  (No no no I mean the animal kind of black ponies!)  No?  

Aha!  Black Angus.  

And here I thought I'd have a quiet evening sipping Navan and writing.

I'd tried to get goat feed earlier but the feed store was closed by the time I got there, a fact that's particularly annoying because I had nothing, no alfalfa, no grain, nothing that would appeal ... well, now that I think about it, I do have peanut butter and also rabbit feed.  D'oh!  But I didn't think of that.  I went out to try to herd the cows toward our neighbors' place.  Whether or not they belong to the neighbors is moot.  They needed to be contained so the rightful owners could eventually locate them.  Right?  So my good Sam butt got run ragged trying to herd them when finally I called 911.  What's my emergency?  Cows.  

The officers are on their way.

I figure, if we can't herd them, maybe we can have a nice roast?

Anyway, as I get to know the animals, I notice that there are two cows, two nice calfs, and a young not-very-big (read young, but no longer a calf) bull.  They're nice, docile animals that like to kick up their heels when they run away laughing mockingly at the two legs trying to keep them from either running down into the woods or onto the road.

I meet two of my neighbors at the road, and they join in the happy hijinx.  I'd thought, earlier, that maybe late tonight I'd go work out.  I decided, while gasping as I climbed the hill behind my house for the fourth time, that that would be overdoing it.  As time wore on, I wondered if there was good karma coming out of me chasing someone else's livestock.  Maybe someday someone will chase my livestock for over an hour, keeping them out of harm's way and trying to contain them so I'd have a better chance of finding them.  Wouldn't that be nice?  I knew of at least two other fools, er, I mean, neighbors who, like me, were willing to slog about in snow, mud and blackberries to tend to someone else's problem, so I guess it's in the realm of possibility that someone might return the favor someday.  

In the end, though, the bull kicked up his heels one last time and danced, laughing, into the woods.  We called it a night.  I called 911 back and told them not to bother anymore.  We'd never get the cows out of the woods in the dark.

The Sea of Unconditional Love still barks, though sadly, toward the woods where the cows roam (or are probably bedded down by now) all alone in the Ravine of Doom.  The dogs remember the Ravine of Doom well.  They spent several days lost down there.  Poor cows!  Come home, cows, come home! the dogs call.

Soon I'll feed the dogs and they'll forget all about the sad (not!) cows dreaming in the dark woods.  The real sadness is that the liquor store closed while I was running around with the herd.  No Navan for Kami.  But at least we had beautiful, unusually late snow to adorn the Land of Mocking Livestock.

Anyone missing some disrespectful cows?

In Flux

Katherine is settling in nicely.  She's learning the joys of chasing paintbrushes, empty dinnerplates left on the counter after a prime rib dinner, a steady food supply, toilet water (ugh!) and kitty laser pointer games.  I'm still worried about her.  She sits a little funny and her hindquarters aren't very strong.  Still, she gets around and has enough energy after a day-long nap to play, explore and knock things over.  I'm teaching her the joys of stealth, aka not knocking things over, and areas that are out of bounds.  She responds very well to intimidating body posture, so I haven't had to yell at her, which is great.  I just stand in her way and loom and she backs down.  She's not fearful, just responsive.
Such a perfect little kitty.  No calls yet in response to the ad or the Humane Society file.

Meanwhile, we've had more snow.  Right around dinner time we had a big fall that kept the big flakes coming until sunset.  We ended up with more record-setting snow and pretty sky colors despite the warmer temps today.  It's really fun, wondering whether I'll wake up to rain, snow, or clear skies.  After many years of dreary, rainy springs with non-stop cloudy skies from early March through early June, I feel like we're actually getting to experience a new season as opposed to enduring the long, drawn out death of winter.  

I celebrated by taking some pics, some movies, and I wrote some and painted some.  Technically I'm still painting.  There's a phase in watercolor called leave it the hell alone.  So I'm leaving it alone so that the color can dry and stabilize before I go play some more.  Katherine informed me that it was time to leave it the hell alone by hopping up onto the dining table and sniffing around the watercolor palette.  Something smelled intriguing enough that I was worried she might sample, so I picked up the palette.  She would have none of it.  She followed the escaping palette by climbing onto the chair.  When I swung it out behind me she made a jump for it and tipped the paint tray just enough to splash a little Hunter's green onto the soon-to-be-eradicated white carpet.  

Time for the kitty to go play with Orion.  She purred madly as I picked her up.  I let her play with the paper towel I've been using for blotting while I carried her down the stairs.  I let the boy know it was his turn to entertain the thing.  She has served her purpose.  She got me away from mucking up the colors.  Now it's time to get back to work.

I hope everyone is having good, or at least fun, weather!

Heavy

The snow is coming down fast in big flakes, not white out  conditions but still remarkable.  It's gorgeous.  I'm glad Rory got home before it started coming down this hard.  

The giant snow ogre was leaning this morning, and by late morning he finally toppled, poor thing.  Well, with the fresh snow we might roll him back together or just making him into something new.

Ugh, I'm in major girl pain right now, but hopefully for the last time.  I start my new treatment at the end of the week.  If it works, I'll be so happy!  If not, we have another easy option.  It's normally a $500 day 'surgery' but with our insurance it will cost all of $5.  I can hardly wait to feel some results.  I'm sure my blood count will be thankful too.  Which reminds me, I haven't taken my iron pill today.  Yuck.  Isn't there a form I can submit that takes me off the reproductive cycle?  I don't plan on having any more children.  Really.  See the sincerity on my pain-tightened face?

More Snow? Bring It On!

I haven't built a snowman in what seems like forever.  Today we went overboard and built a snow ogre that I had trouble reaching to create the nose and a spot for the eyes to rest (Rory pinned them in, and he also provided the creative genius and physical skills for the teeth, mustache, eyebrows, branchy hair and the green beard.)  Andrea and I used truck ramps to roll the snowball for the midsection onto the lower section.  Rory lifted the head up.  Orion provided creative options and some help with the shoulders but mostly he worked on his sentinels for the driveway.   He also made the little snowman on a spit for the snow ogre.  If we only had a tractor, we could build a really gigantic dragon--or I guess I could just use good ol' fashioned elbow grease.  That'd be a lot of grease, though.  Might even be bad for me.  Cholesterol being an issue and all.  Or is elbow grease cholesterol free or maybe the good kind of cholesterol?  Anyway, since we were doing the traditional snow stuff anyway we had a couple of snowball fights (I've noticed that concepts like teams and sides are more fluid in snowball fights than other games) and the kids went sledding.  The neighbor kids came over and had fun and then we all had hot chocolate (the adults had adulterated hot drinks.)  The weather couldn't have been better for all this.  I even abandoned my coat at one point.

While rifling around my gardening stuff looking for seeds (it's time to organize and also to get the slow-germinating seeds into their starter pots) I discovered three bags of overlooked tulips, poor things.  They were still alive, so I planted them.  Going from occasional light and warm air to dark and wet and frigid must have been quite a shock.  I hope they make it.  There might be more bags, as that area is still a mess.  I'll try to get that all organized tomorrow.  Then again, all is a very strong term.  Most might be a more appropriate word, or perhaps even some would be about as much as I can expect.  It's a mess that's been around a long time, so it's entrenched.  I wouldn't be surprised to find mice nesting in there, and I've already seen some impressive spiders who've made a very fine home amid the debris.  Yeah, it's that bad.  

As much as I love summer and gardening, I have to say that I'd be thrilled to have more days like today.  This one will last in memory a long time.  I hope everyone else had a great day too. 

Birds and Hazards

We had heavy (for this area) snowfall last night while we slept.  I love waking up to snow, and quiet, and the swarms of birds that snow always brings.  (Note to self--refill the feeders.)  I swept off the tile downstairs where I keep my bird supplies and dumped the sweepings onto the snow.  In minutes, three juncos had found the pile and started scratching through it.

The motion attracted Huntress.  She started talking to them in the language of the birds.  I don't think they understood her.  She has a really thick accent.  She kept trying, though.  They ignored her, poor thing.

I went in to work late, when I felt comfortable with driving.  The roads were good on the way to work, and on the way back home, but just before I got to the house I noticed there was still traces of slush in the road.  If it freezes tonight, it could be nasty, though not all the way down the hill.  The trick is to get past the ice without ditching and making it onto the lower, dry or merely wet part of the road.  The other trick is to have that instinct that tells you that the steep curves near the bottom of the hill are safe.  Many a driver trying to commute into town has listened to their instinct and been oh so wrong.  They've been wrong enough that the folks living on the downhill side of the curves got tired of people ending up in their cow pasture, so they built up a huge berm.  

If only cars were as proportionally durable as a skateboard, you could bank off the berm down the next stretch and look pretty cool in the process.  Of course the last curve has no berm and you'd then end up off the side of the road on a steep hill crushed against a tree.  What we really need there, since the slope is too steep to rationally attempt to build a berm there, is one of those cement half-pipes set on its side.  Then not only could you use it to negotiate the curve, you could also flip a loop with your car.  Not even the Dukes of Hazzard pulled off a stunt like that.

Fire, Snow, and Book

I love the woodstove.  It keeps the house really toasty while saving us a heap of money.  We'll save even more if we go cut ourselves instead of buying it from our wonderful neighbor (who sold it to us for less than he could have gotten for it on the open market.)  Rory will enjoy chopping it up, too.  Funny how he loathes hauling water but really enjoys splitting rounds.  Anyway, despite all the niceties associated with having a woodstove (heated blanket at bedtime or warm your back or hands, anyone?) there are disadvantages.  One of them is that when there's no one to tend it for a long time, say if it's a weekend and we all have it off so everyone sleeps in, then the fire dies and the temperature inside the house noticeably drops.  Waking up to a 60F degree house in the morning isn't that bad, but it's definitely not comfortable in pjs and bare feet.  At least the floor is warm downstairs.  Having the woodstove going for so long, and having carpet, has allowed the cement floor downstairs to retain heat and it holds it pretty well.  That's in the environs of the woodstove only.  In my office the tile floor is toe-curling cold, and I'm not talking the good toe curling either.  

The kids had a snow day off today so they spent the day horsing around and I spent the day cleaning and working on my website (aka horsing around.)  I found out that my print options include saving documents as .pdf and that iPhoto can import .pdfs, so now I'm officially in business as far as graphics on the website.  All the novels listed on the Writing page have updated, cleaner graphics.  While I was at it I added Signet to the list.  

Speaking of Signet, I'm about 15,000 words in and having fun.  I like having Gutter around.  As in Masks, I'm not sure exactly what's going to happen.  Some people write out detailed outlines or build large diagrams to develop political or mystery novels.  I may end up doing that, but for now I'm free climbing, keeping myself open to those unexpected twists and turns.  I'm hoping there will be some good ones.  In Masks I got away with having a pretty simple problem.  In Signet, it's going to be a hydra, and Lark will have no idea where the heart is until it's too late.  That's just where he ought to be--up to his neck in teeth.  

A little bit more snow

It nicely snowed for us this morning.  The kids have a two hour late start to school.  Commuter traffic is puttering down the hill at about 30 mph.  As often as not, I hear the drone of cables or the rattle of chains when cars and trucks go by.  It started snowing about an hour before midnight last night and I half-expected it to be all melted by morning.  Not so.  So the bird feeder will need filling as the hoards will once again go on a seed-pecking rush.  I have the cell phone by me as Rory will call me from work to tell me what the road conditions are.  I'm driving the PU and can put it in 4 wheel drive, but I'm not going to fuss with trying to get into work on time if the snow is all the way to the bottom of the hill.  Those curves--it's not worth mucking up my vehicle or risking injury for my job.  If I had to guess, though, looking at the road from the house, it looks okay.

Surprisingly, I haven't heard the manic snow plow man or the sand truck yet this morning.  Or maybe I just missed it.

It would have been nice to have a pajama and housecleaning day, maybe get dressed just to build a snowman, but I only work two days this week.  Shock of all shocks, I only work today and Saturday.  Today we have snow, and Saturday there's both a Lucky Labs meeting and an OryCon meeting.  I wonder what bones my boss rolled to determine what days I should work this week.  I need to swap them out for a new set.

Updates

Looks like my brother-in-law is in for a big fight, but one that he can outlast the enemy.  We're all thinking our best thoughts for him.

My grandmother suffered a blood clot injury that has permanently blinded her in one eye.  I'm just glad she didn't have a stroke.  More tests ensuing.  I thought from her description that something went wrong with a scar from her cataract surgery.  Now I'm so very sorry that I didn't worry more and insist that she go to the emergency room on Christmas Eve.  I guess no one expects these things to happen.  Secretly I hope that the doctors are wrong and that some sort of regeneration is possible so my beloved grandma can have sight restored to what had been her good eye.

In more lighthearted news, apparently we're in for a big snow storm.  I'm going to see if I can't get Rory to call in to work.  He probably won't, but it's worth a try.  The stuff they're having him do right now he's whipping through much more quickly than they've budgeted time for, so it won't hurt any projects, but on the other hand I don't think he wants to lose the work hours.  Plus, he prefers to be as dependable as is humanly possible.

I worked some more on my website.  It's really addicting.  I have to put some time into writing and marketing now, so that'll be it for the site for now.  It was fun doing something different.

A Merry One

We got an entertaining amount of snow today.  At one point I was thinking sheesh, whoever set us up for a white Christmas really outdid themselves.  Big, fluffy (meaning the air was really warm) flakes quickly gathered up on the ground.  We played Jimmy Buffett (not the Christmas album) and danced to our favorite songs, watched Terminator (the boy got the DVD as a gift) and played Chinese checkers, which I haven't been able to do forever because we didn't have a board.  

I wish I wasn't such a poopyhead yesterday.  I wanted to run around and deliver presents.  Instead I moped until we had to leave in the early afternoon for my mom's for Christmas Eve stuff.  We ate good food and talked and shared gifts and did family stuff in the house I grew up in.  Which is all for the good, but now I have lots of gifts under the shrub that need to be with their families and aren't yet.  It's the forest of undelivered toys.  I've been a very naughty Santa this year.

Still, we had a very good family day.  The house is warm, and it's still white outside.  I have lots of good memories.  Big dogs playing in the snow.  Mint hot chocolate.  Duck dinner.  Rory and Orion chasing each other around the house.  Birds darting around the feeders.  The quiet as traffic slows down to nearly non-existent.  Festive fire in the upstairs fireplace, and a vanilla candle burning on the altar.  Cats chasing a laser pointer.  Eating breakfast at the table, all of us together at once.  We have it very good here, and I'm very thankful for that.

Snow on the deck.   

Juncos, chickadees, towhees and nuthatches

 are our primary visitors.  Nuthatches don't like chickadees and visa versa.  They avoid each other when possible, but sometimes they can't avoid a squabble.  I was surprised that I didn't see any scrub jays today.  

Something about the snow makes our birds particularly voracious.  We've had much colder days without this many birds showing up at the feeder.  When snow comes it must be much harder for them to find food on the ground, and that would make anyone frantic, even if the snow is very thin like it was today.