That was some weekend, wasn’t it? Cold, ominous, and with inexorable weather rolling in for everyone. We had our usual Chick-fil-A on Saturday, a video chat that evening, and took a walk on Sunday just before that weather started making it’s presence known locally.
It came in two waves here. One, last night, with a couple of inches of new snow. This on top of the three or four inches we got last week that never had a chance to melt. And the second wave is coming upon us now, and late into the evening. Forecasters suggest we’ll be getting an inch of snow per hour for a while.
I went into the office today, because that’s what you do. And 15 minutes later the email came down: Work from home, people.
So I left at 2 p.m., because it was really starting to come down. I park in a parking deck at work, and my car was dry, but it was snowing enough to accumulate on the windshield and roof while sitting at a single red light. That, to me, seems like a lot of snow.
So you drive slow, and stay well back. Fortunately not a lot of people were on the roads. I suspect the stay-at-home, the day’s work-from-home and just the wisdom of staying out of this foolish weather kept people safely indoors. Just before I made it to our neighborhood I could see the car ahead of me fishtailing in a roundabout. An ominous sign. After that, three-quarters of a mile, and the treacherous and unkempt roads of the neighborhood, lay between me and my safe, dry garage. So I slowed down even more, because that seems like a thing to do, and Icrept in. You could run it faster. But I made it, just in time to see the birds.
If that cardinal doesn’t impress you, perhaps you’d like to see the eastern bluebird.
We had three at one time, which was a lot for this time of year. These little thrushes should be in the southwest right about now, but they are back, so I’ll take that as a sign.
They come and go through the shrubs and trees and bird feeders. Eventually the bluebirds gave way to warblers.
I would have thought the birds would be all in their nests right now, and building roofs.
The snow makes for a neat backdrop, no?
The cats are doing just fine. They are warm and dry. They probably want to go outside, but I think they’d decide against the idea when their paws got cold. They are lightweights, like me.
They can’t be perfectly untroubled by what’s going on outside. Phoebe is hunkering down, for some reason.
She’s lately developed a new pose that involves swimming over the shoulder.
Poseidon doesn’t know what that’s about, either.
When he’s not traumatizing his sister, or trying to figure out what she’s up to, he’s taking a great interest in laundry. It’s hard to fold sheets when he’s climbing inside of them.
I eventually turned a fitted sheet into a hammock for him and gently swung him back and forth until my arms got tired. I thought it might drive him away, but he liked it. Eventually I set the cat-carrying-sheet back on the floor and wrapped him up inside. You could hear him purring from six feet away. Eventually he climbed out a bit, so I folded the sheets around him. He was perfectly happy to stay like that for quite a while.
Pretty smart cat, sometimes, wouldn’t you say?
