It's Here

It has been a strange start to the new year. Lot’s of sadness watching the Ford family deal with their loss, political turmoil at the hanging of Saddam and grief at the shooting death at the high school my sons had attended. It is taking me a while to process and get into the swing of a new year.

I am writing for a zine. Here is a link to info on it, Astarte's Mega-Zine. It should be very interesting and keep me on my toes a bit. What can I say, given time to myself I am just as apt to stick my nose in a book as do anything else. So writing with deadlines helps keep me on target.

And I am praising whatever powers that be that encouraged us to buy the Sorento. This has been the winter we have needed it. Tuesday night we got a snowfall of a couple inches. Okay, I know most of you are laughing. A couple inches of snow isn’t much but around here it might as well be 12” of snow. We don’t know how to deal with snow. Schools were cancelled, plans were changed. The snow was mostly gone by 11 o’clock am. So we were all feeling a little chagrined by our lack of snow skill by the afternoon, despite the weather folks telling us that frigid air was coming, “beware, beware.” Yeah, okay, as long as it wasn’t snow, rain or wind (all of which we have had to great abundance this winter), who cares?

Well, at 7 o’clock the light flurries started. By 9 o’clock we had 6 “ of snow. By morning it was 8” of snow piled so beautifully on top of the car and the birdbath (make sure to click on the picture to see the whole view).   Doesn’t it look nice in the pictures? It was lovely to watch.

But come morning, the Mailman needed to get to work. No biggie there, he’s used to driving in snow to go skiing. Plus, he has his all wheel drive Subaru Forrester. Produce Man (our youngest), however, has a Honda something with balding tires and was to be a work by 6 am. Nor, did he want his father to drop him off at work because he figured no one would bring him home. Yep, he didn’t believe I’d come pick him up because he had years of me driving him to school in whatever car we had at the time which didn’t have 4 wheel drive or snow tires or chains. Yes, I admit it. My sons probably picked up a swear word or two from me during those death defying drives to and from school. Mainly when a big truck would come zooming up on the car’s rear and hang there trying to get me to go faster when I could tell my car was barely in contact with the road anyhow, let alone trying to stop for anything, say like a light or a person.

Well, I am very pleased to say that those days are gone. Even though we were late, I drove Eldest Son to work at 8 am. And there wasn’t any swearing. Oh, I love 4 wheel drive. This really was the first time I had driven in snow with 4 wheel drive. What a difference.

Today, was the ice challenge as our temperatures have indeed dropped dramatically. This morning it was about 15 degrees outside. Our high today might break freezing. Who knows? But again the car handled lovely. I still am not the bravest driver in snow and you probably won’t hear me volunteer to drive in snow but I can at least now do it with some confidence. What a relief.

After dropping off , Eldest Son at work I did some shopping and as I was bring in the groceries our big black cat, Basil , was ever so pleased to show me his new toy. He’d caught it himself and wanted to share the joy with me by tossing it up into the air at me. Even though I praised him greatly, I couldn’t help the little shriek when the dead mouse came flying towards me. By the time I finished unloading the groceries Basil had disposed of his “toy” and all was well.

I am closing with a few more snow pictures. These were taken on our drive to our property in upper Central Washington. We never made it all the way to our property as the very primitive road wasn’t cleared all the way up to our place. It was still a nice trip to see the property in winter. Along the way we had to stop for a cattle drive across the road.