Cold as a bat’s underpants

  • Minus four degrees out right now. Yep, first win­ter smack­down of ’05. Goody goody.

    I found myself singing some of the silly winter-themed not-Christmas-carol music — Win­ter Won­der­land, Let it Snow, Marsh­mal­low World. They all cover the same ter­ri­tory — cold as heck out­side, but we build a fire and then who cares if we ever get the car out of the dri­ve­way again.

    Snow dayI’m glad to find that it is sort of like that. This was the scene out our kitchen door this morn­ing. It had started snow­ing yes­ter­day, and since I got caught in the storm when I was still an hour away, I got a lit­tle stressed out over it. When I made it home, I treated myself to gar­lic toast and a pot of tea. Greg started a fire in the fire­place — our first one here — and we got back to work, check­ing on the snow­fall every time the dog needed to go out.

    Clem in snowClemen­tine is a big wimp about rainy days, but it’s not the same with snow. As a mat­ter of fact, once she goes out in the snow, she nearly always just stands there for a moment as if she’s lis­ten­ing to top secret instruc­tions from the Dog Planet … and then she just starts run­ning. I really don’t know whether it just hap­pens because walk­ing through the snow is a bother when you’re only about 30″ high, or if there’s just some­thing about snow that trips a switch in her fool­ish doggy heart. But snow usu­ally makes her do a cou­ple laps around the back yard at break­neck speed, after which she comes to a com­plete stop just in front of me and looks at me with a “You want a piece of this or what?” look. I never do want a piece of that, but she’s always hope­ful. This morn­ing how­ever, she spent a lot more time look­ing up at the tree, which is just as well since I can’t cap­ture a blur on film.

    Romeo in winterThe object of her atten­tion turned out to be Romeo the squir­rel (minus Juliet, who he chased out of his tree after the weather turned bad. He did the same thing last win­ter — what a cad!). He couldn’t be both­ered to even to chat­ter at her because it would take valu­able time away from eat­ing, and he appar­ently felt like that was a lux­ury he couldn’t afford.

    But that was all this morn­ing. Since then, there have been sugar cook­ies and some snow shov­el­ing and some second-tier Christ­mas dec­o­rat­ing that I didn’t think I’d get done. And another pot of tea.

    Oh, the weather out­side is fright­ful,
    But inside it’s so delight­ful,
    And since we’ve no place to go,
    Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

    And the peo­ple say, “Amen.” Thine the glory.


    Related posts:

    1. 6:40 am
    2. Angry wildlife, part II
    3. Squir­rel update
    4. It’s fall! I’m draw­ing as fast as I can!
    5. Pascha on the porch

    December 8th, 2005 | Grace | 2 Comments |

2 Responses and Counting...

  • Mimi 12.08.2005

    It’s so beautiful!

  • Grace

    It really is, and I’ve noticed that in years where you get neg­li­gi­ble snow, every­one turns a lit­tle cranky.

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