The Weather Outside Is Frightful...

It's snowing. We've had a blessed non-winter winter here, and it's been delightful not to have to deal with the white stuff. But here it is, the end of December, and we are finally getting snow. We are in the midst of a "snow squall", which really is a small, localized storm that comes in off Lake Huron and "plays red feck" (as my dad would say) with our city and nowhere else.

I thought we would never get any snow this year, because the Mister and I bought a brand new snow blower back in September. You see, we used to have some lovely, elderly neighbours who's son-in-law used to come and snow-blow their driveway for them, and as often as not, would come over and do ours too. But the lovely, elderly neighbours moved into a retirement home last summer, so somehow, I doubt that their son-in-law will be coming around any time soon to blow out our driveway. So we bought our own snowblower, which pretty much guaranteed we'd be snowless this year.

Thing 1 and I went to a movie this afternoon, and elected to walk home from the theatre, about a 20 minute walk. (We saw "New Moon ", which I hadn't seen, but Thing 1 had and was happy to see again. The fourteen-year-old girl in me loved it.) It wasn't snowing when we went into the movie, and it was daylight, so we had an interesting walk home....it was dark by then, and blowing and swirling badly enough to make it tough to see where you were going, and curbs and sidewalks were obliterated, so one got a bit of a jolt when the terrain suddenly dropped 6 inches from one step to the next. We looked ridiculous staggering around out there, I'm sure.

Thing 2 had been dying to go snowboarding, which she was able to do this afternoon, too. It's been way too warm for the local ski hill to even make any snow lately, so she was thrilled with the natural stuff. She was annoyed that we would only pay for a two-hour lift ticket, but after falling for the first hour, and spraining her left wrist part way through the second hour, she was happy enough to call it a day.

The only one really disappointed with winter's sudden arrival is Toby. Man, is he pissed. Somehow, he blames me. Every time he scratches at the door to go out, I gamely open the door only to have him recoil at the blast of cold air, and then give me a deeply wounded look, as though I had cruelly hoodwinked him. Then he slinks into the kitchen and demands a treat.

We live in Canada, I suppose winter was bound to show up sooner or later. I could have used later.