Snow day!

Well, more of a wind day but who's counting.

We got a little snow and a lot of wind out of this storm, which made the little snow look like a lot of snow in a few places. Coming on the heels of several record-setting 50 degree days it was disagreeable to wake up to drifts and below-zero windchills this morning.

Then the kitchen pipes were frozen so I just gave up and took the day off.

Took half the morning to thaw the d*mned pipes. I'd like to meet the rocket scientist who ran all the kitchen and bathroom plumbing along the foundation in the northwest corner of the basement. Then set windows into the foundation.

We've lived in this house for 20 years and no matter how much insulating, caulking, wrapping and swearing we do, they freeze at least once every winter. I've gotten really good at figuring out where to aim the space heater. And which magic words to say to make the pipes thaw faster. I'm sure it's the magic words that really help.

Phoenix was a bit of a nutter about the snow. He got the butt-tucking, crazy-ass-wild zoomies. Would have been cute if it hadn't been below zero and pitch dark at 5:30 a.m. Jamie couldn't get back in the house fast enough.

The Farmer moved the bred cow herd up into a field closer to the house yesterday. Phoenix looked out the living room window and discovered this at about 8:30 am. and had a good 15 minutes of screaming malinois meltdown. He is a wonderful alert dog but he alerts indiscriminately - the same reaction for strangers on the yard, bunnies hopping in the moonlight and a large number of cows where there were no cows yesterday.

I spent part of the day actually working (the chair at my home computer is seriously NOT an office chair, gimme the ibuprofen), catching up with laundry and making food. Made a yummy pasta salad for a party tomorrow night, a meatloaf for tonight's supper and just put two loaves of English muffin bread in the oven.

Mixed up the bread and the recipe said "Cover and place in warm spot to rise." Yeah. Warm spot. Right. And where would THAT be in this house today?

Went out to try shoveling the sidewalks and patio about an hour ago. First I had to find my winter coat. Don't laugh - we haven't had enough nasty weather this winter to justify wearing a winter coat until today.

Wind hasn't gone down a bit. I re-shoveled the same snow I'd already shoveled in the morning and decided it might just be easier to walk around the drifts and wait for it to go away. Fed the cat (who didn't want to come out of her box), convinced Jamie to stay out long enough to actually do his business and convinced Phoenix to stop acting like a crazy idiot long enough to actually do his business.

Played some obedience games indoors with Phoenix and gave Jamie hugs just because. Phoenix has been flinging his toys at me and every single ball, Kong and Nylabone he has is carefully piled at my feet. Now he's bringing me slippers.

Spring is just around the corner, right?