A Direct Skunk Hit

I don't know what it going on, but I have seen more skunks around this fall than I have seen in the previous seven years we've lived here combined.

A few weeks ago, the eldest child came to find me late at night to let me know that a skunk had sprayed directly under his window and that it was too awful in his room to sleep. He moved onto the couch for the night. Shortly after that, the dogs sounded the alarm in the shop, and A. went out to find a small skunk wedged against the shop's foundation wall, under a shelf. He managed to shoot it anyway and we disposed of it. The dogs were slightly stinky, but didn't sustain any damage from the encounter.

This morning at 5:30, I was sitting in my room with the window open when I smelled the unmistakable presence of a skunk. And then the dogs again started barking frantically, this time in the covered porch that is right out our front door.

I grabbed a flashlight and opened the front door to find Jasper on the front steps and a skunk right next to the steps with its tail raised.

I stood in our front door to take this photo. The skunk was right between that jug of vinegar and the red jacket.

I closed the door and alerted A. By the time he got his pistol loaded, the skunk was gone. The dogs had left their defensive positions. Partially they gave up because once I arrived, they considered their job done. But also, the skunk sprayed. Right there. On our front steps. And directly in Jasper's face, I think.

When A. went out to find the skunk gone, Jasper was hiding in the corner, making little gasping noises and with his eyes streaming tears. He had clearly gotten the spray in his eyes and also inhaled some. I looked online to see what we should do, but the suggestions of flushing his eyes out with saline solution or bathing his head with a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, etc. didn't seem too practical for one of our feral dogs. They are not accustomed to being handled, and he was obviously in distress. I think we would have gotten a pretty good bite for our troubles.

The internet also said we should take him to a vet. Given the nearest vet is 100 miles away, I decided to wait a bit on that one and see what happened.

In the meantime, our entire house absolutely reeked of skunk. I have never smelled anything like it. A strong skunk smell is a bit like really strong tire rubber. This was like that, but more chemically and a little like garlic. If garlic smelled like tires and chemicals. It was bad. SO bad. And everywhere in the house.

The smell actually woke all the children up. There wasn't much I could do. I don't buy scented candles, although we do have three religious candles with saints on them that A. bought at the grocery store many years ago for the children. These are lightly scented, so I lit them and gave two to the youngest children, who brought them into Poppy's room. This is a small room, with no outside windows or anything, so they could kind of seal it off. 

They also asked me for some of my perfume. I bought a set of sample fragrances awhile ago so I could try a bunch, and I still had some. I gave this to them.

A plethora of options.

They chose Versace White Diamond and sprayed it liberally in Poppy's room.

The eldest child barricaded himself in his bedroom and sprayed his cologne in there. Amusingly, this is Versace Eros. So now that entire side of the house smells like a Versace scent factory.

I, meanwhile, sat at the dining room table with the St. Martin candle directly under my nose.

Being careful not to burn my nose, of course.

As soon as it was light, I was out the door in search of fresh air. An excellent incentive to get out for my run this morning. 

Jasper was still in his corner, but when I came out, he got up and went on my run with me. His eyes seemed fine, although he did stop several times to rub his head in the tall grasses and I caught his unfortunate stench anytime I was downwind of him.

The face of a dog who will not be getting any petting in the near future.

The kitchen, which is pretty close to the front door, still smells bad, even with all the windows open. For this reason, I allowed the eldest child to eat his breakfast in his bedroom. The younger children ate theirs in the van.

Well-ventilated, and with handy cup holders for their chocolate milk.

I can only hope that skunk took off for a far-off destination, never to be seen again. And that we don't get any more skunky visitors this fall.

Addendum: How naive of me to think the skunk was gone! Just now, hours after the excitement, I was coming up the front steps and saw something black and furry wedged under the firewood rack right next to the steps. Like literally eight inches from where my feet were. For a second I thought it was one of the dogs. But they had gone on a walk with one of the kids. Could it be the skunk, which had hidden itself RIGHT NEXT TO MY FRONT STEPS?

Yup. Apparently the dogs were so traumatized by their run-in with it, they just decided it could live next to our steps forevermore.

This time A. had his pistol ready to go and dispatched it quickly. But it did not go gently into that good night, instead sending out more waves of putrid stench as it died. Next to my front door.

Thanks a lot, skunk. And good riddance.

What Stalks in the Night

 

Good news! It didn't freeze Tuesday night! We squeaked by with 33 degrees, which means all the battling I did with covers in the howling wind to protect my tomato plants was unnecessary. That's okay by me, though. It's going to get warm again, and I anticipate some good harvests of green beans and tomatoes. I'm very glad none of the plants died.

Something else did die that night, though: a sheep. And that is definitely a story you don't hear every day. I will tell it, with fair warning that it involves nature in a somewhat grisly form. 

Although we didn't know it, the drama actually began late in the afternoon. The sheep and the horse were together in the field adjoining our next-door "new" house, which is visible from our kitchen windows. We were eating dinner when Cubby jumped up from the table, saying, "What are the sheep doing? They're running. And the horse is going crazy!"

The sheep were bunched up in the way that they do when they feel threatened, and the horse was galloping around, which is not something he does unless greatly agitated. We thought maybe there had been a rattlesnake or something, so Cubby and A. went out and looked around a bit. They didn't see anything, so A. wrote it off as a nervous reaction to the incredibly high winds and changing weather.

When night fell, the horse was back in his pen near the house, and the sheep were in the vineyard pasture that A. had fenced off for them to eat all the weeds in it. The vineyard pasture is right behind the house, and it adjoins the same pasture the sheep had been in earlier. I was just about to go to bed when Cubby came running out of his room, saying there was a commotion in the pasture. 

His window looks out on the vineyard pasture and the horse pen, and he heard the two dogs going nuts and the horse whinnying and galloping around. A. took his spotlight out to investigate. He found the dogs in with the sheep. They had the flock all rounded up in a bunch in a corner of the pasture. 

These dogs come from cattle-working breeds and are instinctual herders, so A. figured they were just having a little fun and scolded them before putting the sheep back into the next-door pasture and closing the gate so the dogs couldn't get at them. He shut the dogs in the porch for good measure, to ensure no more unauthorized activity.

The horse was hysterical, A. assumed in reaction to the sheep's nervousness and running around, so A. went in with Samson and patted and soothed him a little.

The next morning, just as we were about to all get on the bus for school, A. came in to tell us there was a sheep dead only about six feet from the house, practically under Cubby's bedroom window. It's throat had been ripped out and a few bites taken from its udder. 

It was clearly not a natural death. The question was, what killed it?

Here's what A. thinks happened. A mountain lion was passing through when it smelled the sheep and stopped to investigate. It was probably hiding somewhere around all the old sheds and things by the next-door pasture when the sheep and horse got so agitated in the late afternoon. Then it jumped the fence and took down the sheep when night fell. It only got a few bites before the dogs chased it off, though, and shortly after that, A. went outside. He didn't see the dead sheep in the dark.

Mountain lions generally live in the canyons here, where the larger game animals live and where there is plenty of cover for the lions' preferred stalking method of hunting. They do sometimes travel on the plateau where we live, particularly when the weather is changing. They are very large--males are over 100 pounds--almost completely fearless, and undaunted by fences. 

They will also kill small women and children, so it's definitely not something you want to have around your house. And I was not too easy in my mind when I considered Cubby tromping around the pasture in the afternoon while a mountain lion watched him from its hiding place.

A. made sure his spotlight and gun were ready last night, but everything remained quiet, so it's most likely that the animal has moved on. The ewe that was killed was a very old one we were going to cull anyway. She was already bloated and inedible by the time A. found her, but there wasn't much meat on her anyway, so it wasn't a great loss.

The real heroes here are Jasper and Odin, who chased off a predator that outweighs them by fifty pounds or more. Those dogs are apparently entirely unafraid of any animal, and those are definitely the kind of dogs we need to have.

As A. said, we had gotten accustomed to living here, considering it just like anywhere. And then we get a reminder like this that we do indeed live in a remote and wild place, where mountain lions might appear at any time.

Introductions Are in Order

So.

As of yesterday, we have a horse.

Everyone, meet Samson.

Samson, meet everyone.

Samson was given to us by one of the teachers at the school, who also co-owns a ranch down the hill and runs the quarter-horse breeding program there. Her family has had a horse operation for generations, and to say she knows horses is a great understatement. Samson was the horse her own daughter, now grown, learned to ride on and won many competitions with.

Samson is now 22 years old and has bad teeth, which means he can't just graze on pasture like all horses do here. He needs special senior horse feed, which is expensive and requires someone to actually feed him twice a day. 

On a large ranch, this care quickly becomes burdensome and impractical, as well as expensive. So Samson really couldn't stay where he was, but they didn't want to just put him down, because besides his teeth, he's in very good shape.

So she thought of us. I had asked her about riding lessons for the boys when we first moved here, and she thought maybe we would like Samson.

We would.

Samson is an exceptionally calm and well-trained horse, which is just what our children need. According to the lady we got him from, who taught her own two daughters to ride on him, there is no safer horse for children. Good thing, as I know exactly nothing about horses and wouldn't know what to do with a horse that isn't basically like a huge, well-trained dog.

His implacable nature is also useful given that Jasper--who apparently has a deep distrust of horses--spent all day yesterday by the fence, barking at the horse.

Samson was unimpressed.

Samson is living in half of the back pasture with the chickens. It's a little louder here than what he was used to, but it doesn't seem to bother him.

Welcome to Crazytown, Samson. We're so glad you're here.

The Dynamic Duo

The puppies have arrived.

Made themselves right at home with their new pack mates, too.

Before conking out, that is.

Their names are Jasper and Odin.

Jasper is the bigger, more energetic one.

Fluffier, too.

Odin was the runt of this litter, and is the puppy with only one eye. Hence the name. Well, he has the other eye, but it's completely non-functional.

It's also white and kind of weird looking if you see it up close, but it doesn't seem to bother him in the slightest.

Both dogs are alert and playful (when they're not sleeping, that is) and seem quite well-socialized with people already. Good thing, considering the number of people in our household.

A. and I are already making plans for who needs to get up when to take them out in the middle of the night.

Let the good times roll.

Coming Soon To a Family Near Nobody

Many of you guessed, but here's the photographic answer.

In two weeks, we will have two puppies. Boom.

Why two? Why not? I have four kids, which is more than the average. Might as well have more dogs than the average, too.

These are a mix of border collie, blue lacy cur, and Australian shepherd, all working dogs. Their parents are cattle dogs, and they were born on a ranch about an hour from us. 

We were only going to get one, but when we went to look at the puppies, the people had one with a non-functioning eye that they couldn't really sell as a working dog, but wanted to give to a family as a pet. The puppy was so quiet and sweet that I told A. we might as well have two, so we don't have a lone dog getting bored and lonely when we're gone for one of our day-long shopping trips or whatever.

They're still only six weeks old, and puppies aren't typically weaned until eight weeks, so in a couple of weeks they'll get de-wormed and get all their shots, and then they'll be ready to come home with us.

We're all excited. Except maybe the chickens, but they don't know what's coming.

Teaser

Something exciting is going to happen very soon here. Two somethings, actually.

Here's a hint: We're hoping they'll be a boy's (and girl's) best friends, too.

Any guesses?

(I'll post a photo tomorrow that will make it all very clear.)

A Long-Distance Farewell

Very, very sad news from Blackrock: The MiL's dog Sky was killed on the road in front of the house this weekend. He was chasing a deer on the lakeshore and was hit by a car on his way back across the road. 

The MiL said he was killed instantly and didn't suffer, which I suppose is some comfort. But still. He wasn't even three years old. It was definitely too soon to lose him.

Good-bye to one of the cutest puppies that ever was.

The Saddest Farewell to the Best Dog

My baby dog Mia has died. She was 12 years old, and not in good health: kidney failure, severe arthritis, early stages of senility . . .

It was time. 

But we're all still very sad.

Goodbye, old friend. You will be missed.

Scenes from a Blackrock Summer

Eating snow peas picked from the garden . . .

Playing in the woodchuck wading pool (a.k.a., the utility sled) . . .

And trying desperately to stay cool.

Poor Old Pincushion

Yesterday morning Jack, Poppy, and I were just returning from our walk when I heard A. exclaim, "Oh no! Mia got into a porcupine!"

Oh no, indeed.

Not only had she encountered a porcupine, she apparently tried to bite it. I know this because she had at least two dozen quills all over her nose and inside her mouth. She couldn't close her mouth, and she was dripping saliva and blood all over. It was gruesome.

It got a lot more gruesome when A. started pulling the quills out and the blood started coming faster. I pulled out a few that were in her feet, and I was shocked at how thick and stiff the quills were, as well as deeply embedded. My previous experience had been with removing cactus spines from our dog in Arizona. This was much, much worse.

After a few minutes trying to remove them ourselves with hands, tweezers, and pliers, I asked A. to just take her to the veterinarian in the village. He put her in the car and took off, not even calling first. Three hours and $80 later, Mia was back home and weaving drunkenly around as she worked off the last of the anesthetic.

And through all of that, she didn't make a single sound or try to bite. Still the best dog.

She appears to be fully recovered this morning. I think she's learned her lesson about porcupines. I just hope she doesn't encounter a bear next.

Good Ole Dog Mia

There is no denying that my baby dog Mia is old. She's almost twelve, which is not young for any dog, but is particularly advanced in age for a large dog.

She's stiff and gimpy, thanks no doubt to some arthritis in her shoulder. I suppose this is a natural result of being the World's Biggest Collie (seriously, she's 80 pounds and looks like a mastiff up close) and having a very active life. She takes a pill for pain every day, as well as a pee-pee pill for incontinence.

She's pretty shaky in the legs, and is particularly unstable on the slick wood floors in the kitchen. Too bad, since that's her favorite place to be. She still patrols the kitchen for dropped food, but then retreats immediately to the stability of the rug in the living room.

She has a benign tumor on her eyelid. Fortunately, it's so cold here that when she stays outside during very cold weather--which she will do, even if it's below zero--the tumor will actually freeze off. I find this natural cryosurgery hilarious and joke that we should open a cryosurgery clinic. It would be so easy: Just go outside and expose your mole to the weather! Done!

She can't take any kind of heat anymore and starts panting when the house gets to 70 degrees.

But despite all these things, she's still happy and amazingly active. She's been trudging through the snow in the back field lately to get to the beaver carcass A. put out there to draw wild animals and study their tracks. He thought it was too far for Good Ole Dog Mia to bother with, but she was determined.

She still goes on walks, though we have to shut her in the house for her own good if it's going to be a particularly long one or if it's too warm outside for her.

And she still watches over the hairless puppies:

Or maybe she just wants to steal the blanket. Either way, she's still a good dog.

Celebrating Our Veterans with Snow

Apparently, this year Veterans Day is the beginning of winter. When I got up at 5:47 this morning, it was 10 degrees with a strong wind, and when I went outside to let Mia out, this is what it looked like:

Mia was not amused.

Okay, so technically it didn't look exactly like that, because it isn't even light at 5:47 a.m. I waited until later to take the photo. Obviously.

The boys were very excited about the snow and were out the door like a shot as soon as they had some breakfast.

Well, a shot that was loaded by me first with winter boots, snow pants, hats, mittens, and coats.

Is it a bad sign that I'm already silently but vehemently cursing the winter apparel and it's only the first snowfall of the season? Yeah.

Anyway.

They stayed out for almost an hour, despite the wind and temperature. 

Meanwhile, Poppy was all, "Have fun, guys. I'll just stay here on the couch in my fleecy sleep sack."

Smart girl.

Incidentally, as you can see from the above photo, Poppy is in the baby acne stage of development. That's okay, though, because it gives me the opportunity to sing my own version of "Sixteen Going on Seventeen," from The Sound of Music. It goes like this, "You are three weeks going on thirteen, with pimples across your cheeks . . ." 

Catchy, no?

So that's where we are: playing in the snow and singing ridiculous songs to the baby. Cabin fever, here we come.

The New Dog That Wasn't

Do I know how to set up a cliffhanger or what? Not intentionally, though. I just got busy with our wild spring break at Blackrock* and never sat down to tell you about the dog.

Now I will.

A. took all three boys for a walk on Friday after dinner while I was doing the dishes, and when they came home, Cubby burst in to announce that a brown dog had followed them home. The brown dog was shortly thereafter in my house, because Charlie let it in.

Woah there, cowboys. What just happened here?

What just happened was that this lab/pit bull-ish mutt more or less moved into the family.

We assumed it was a stray. It wasn't wearing a collar. It had been running on a road near us literally on the Canadian border that's pretty unpopulated. We thought it had been dumped.

The dog certainly was happy to be part of our crew. It played with the kids as long as they were outside before bed, so we had the opportunity to note that it wasn't aggressive in the least, which was good. When the kids came in for bed, it sat on our front steps for a couple of hours, then started scratching at the door.

A. felt sorry for it--"it" was actually a female, so "she"--and gave her some dinner. When it was time for us to go to bed, A. decided to put her in his garage/office, because it was going to be near freezing and the dog didn't have much of a coat.

The next morning, I let her out hoping it would find her way home, if home was nearby.

She didn't.

I made up some "Found Dog" signs and posted them at the dump, the post office, and the general store. We knocked on a few doors on the road the dog had been on, but there was no one home anywhere. When it was time for us to leave at 3 p.m. for Blackrock, no one had called, the dog seemed unwilling to go anywhere, and A. didn't want to leave her to fend for itself.

So we brought her along to Blackrock. By this time, the children had named her Friday. Because she was found on Good Friday. Also, like Robinson Crusoe, though they didn't get the literary reference. What are they teaching kids in school these days?

Friday the dog seemed quite happy at Blackrock, as all dogs are. She and Sky became fast friends and played non-stop. She found some ancient deer bones to gnaw on and sniffed out some rabbits in the hollow.

And then, on Monday, her owner called.

Turns out he lives on the road she was found on. He said the dog runs off a lot (which begs the question of why the hell he doesn't put a collar with tags on her). And then A. had to tell him that yes, we still have your dog, but, uh, we're 250 miles away. And we took her with us.

Kind of embarrassing.

Anyway. Friday's name was really Emma. The children were sad to hear that Emma-Friday would not be a permanent member of our family. I was not too sad when her owner came to pick her up after we got home today. I really don't feel the need for another dog at this moment. Although I'm afraid this whole episode may have accelerated our timeframe for getting another dog.

But at the moment, I'm enjoying the peace of having only one old dog to deal with. And the old dog is pretty happy about that, too.

* It really was wild. One night A. and I left the kids with the MiL and went to dinner at a Turkish restaurant. At this stage of our lives, that's equivalent to tequila shots in Rocky Point.

Easter at the Madhouse

Happy belated Easter, my lovelies! Did you all have a pleasant day filled with chocolate bunnies, hysterical children, and even more hysterical dogs? No? Just me then.

I do not have photos (sorry, Mary in MN and Mom), but let me paint you a word picture and you will perhaps understand why.

We acquired a new dog on Good Friday. This is a long story that will be told soon, but the end result was that we made the 250-mile drive to Blackrock on Saturday in a minivan crammed with two adults, three small children, and two dogs. Because of some work A. was frantically trying to finish up, we didn't end up leaving until mid-afternoon, which means we arrived at Blackrock around 9 p.m.

After throwing the children in bed, I assembled Easter baskets--the contents of which were brought in the Minivan of Insanity, with additional items provided by the MiL--and fell into bed at 10:30 p.m.

At 6 a.m. the next morning, A. got up to go to an early Mass in the Small City and I got up to hide the Easter eggs that the MiL had kindly purchased, boiled, and dyed for me.

I mean, that the Easter Bunny had left.

But then I did a mental full stop. Because how was I supposed to hide the eggs outside with three dogs running around out there, all of whom were hungry and would probably very much appreciate a hard-boiled egg breakfast? But if I didn't do it soon, the kids would be awake. But maybe they would sleep in (HAHAHAHA--I'm so amusingly optimistic sometimes) and then if I shut the dogs up to hide the eggs they would have to stay shut up for too long.

The mental effort of thinking about all this made me too tired, so I didn't do anything. Except I did put the eggs in the shop so I could sneakily grab them at some later point and hide them when the kids were distracted and the dogs were inside.

Is this sounding far too complicated for a simple Easter egg hunt for 11 dyed eggs? Yes. Yes, it was.

In the end, the kids woke up 10 minutes after A. left (OF COURSE) and I didn't hide the eggs until they were getting ready to go outside awhile later. The MiL was preparing to feed the dogs, which meant they were all inside, so I ran out to the shop and grabbed the eggs. Jack followed me out, letting the new dog out as well.

I herded them both back inside and told Jack to help Grandma feed the dogs. Then I ran back to the shop to get the eggs again.

Charlie came out next, letting Mia out at the same time. I shooed them both back in and told Charlie to help Grandma feed the dogs. And I grabbed the eggs yet again.

This time I managed to frantically throw some eggs around the flower beds before racing back inside to intercept the children and casually mention that hey! You think there are any eggs outside?

And just as I was getting everyone's shoes on to go outside, there was a dog fight in the kitchen (my fault--I hadn't told the MiL not to feed our two dogs in the same place) and poor old dog Mia ended up with a bloody ear.

Anyway. The children found the eggs, and while they were showing Grandma their eggs outside, I hid their Easter baskets inside. And cleaned up the drops of blood on the kitchen floor.

So that was our Easter morning. You can maybe see why I wasn't prancing around happily snapping photos of our photo-worthy egg hunt.

Holidays at Blackrock may be crazy, but they're never boring.

Oh, It's Spring?

Great. That means I can banish the dog to the barn at night. Alleluia.

Lemme 'splain.

See, there are many coyotes here. Many, many coyotes, who run the woods freely at night, yipping and howling and generally making their presence known. Now Mia, who is normally the most mild-mannered of dogs, absolutely loathes coyotes. In her younger days, when she was part of a pack, she would actually hunt them. Now that she's old and crippled, and also has no pack except us useless humans, all she can do is bark.

So she does. Any time she hears the coyotes. Which is all. night. long.

I can't really blame her. I mean, there are howling wild beasts out there. She's a dog. She alerts us to their presence. Not that we need alerting. The damned things are often so close they wake us up.

Unfortunately, Mia's barking wakes us up more.

If she's in A.'s garage office at night, which is her customary bedroom, it keeps us awake because the garage shares a wall with our room. It's also right over Jack's room. No good.

If she's outside, she stands on the front porch to bark, which is about twenty feet from our bedroom, and so, of course, it keeps us awake.

If she's in the house, she barks anyway, which of course wakes everyone up. And then we have to let her out to run around and bark until she's cold and tired or the coyotes move along.

This has been making for some bad nights for me and A. Really bad nights.

So last night, after a remarkably warm day, and when I realized it was going to be above freezing all night long, I hauled her bed and water bowl out to the barn and shut her in there for the night. The barn is far enough away that if she did bark, we wouldn't hear her. It's entirely insulated and enclosed, though not warm enough if the weather stays below freezing for awhile.

But last night? To the barn you go, Mia. I hope you enjoy your night. We certainly will.

Of course, "spring" doesn't mean the same thing here that it does in many places, so it's going to be three degrees tomorrow night. Which means Mia will be in the house again. I can only hope the coyotes play elsewhere.

The Superpost for the Supersnowstorm

Cubby and Charlie were dismissed from school at 11:30 yesterday morning and arrived home on the bus around noon in a pretty good snowstorm. A few hours later, about the time they would normally be arriving home from school, there was an honest-to-God blizzard out there.

At 8 p.m., I opened the door to let Mia out before bed and was confronted with this.

Why the people that built this house didn't enclose the porch is a mystery for the ages.

Mia took one look and turned right around. I couldn't really blame her. There was at least a foot of snow on the ground already. So I put on my outdoor gear and shoveled a path for her to get to the grass, and a little open area to serve as a latrine. She did actually go out after that, but just stood there on the porch blinking in the blowing snow and waiting for me to let her back in. So I did.

This morning at 5:30, I opened the door to this.

Talk about Sisyphean shoveling.

Once again, I grabbed the trusty snow shovel and went out to shovel out the path and the latrine for the dog, this time fighting my way through three feet of snow. Once again, Mia stepped out, walked to the end of the cleared area, took a look at the walls of snow surrounding her on all sides, and came right back in the house.

She did eventually use the facilities, I suppose. 

She also started blending into the environment after about four minutes outside.

When Jack woke up around 6:30 a.m., I went to turn the thermostat up and realized the furnace wasn't running. I realized this because the thermostat was set at 61 degrees, but it was 59 degrees in the house. After checking to make sure none of the monkey-children had flipped the power switch on the furnace, I formed the hypothesis that the furnace vent, which is only about a foot off the ground, was covered over with snow and the furnace was turning itself off as a safety precaution.

I suppose I could have brought Jack out with me to shovel the vent out, but instead I got A. out of nice warm bed so he could go out in the storm to shovel it out.

He did. And when I was in the shower, he got all three kids dressed to go out with him to do some more shoveling.

I took lots of pictures, at A.'s request.

Here Charlie is standing on a path A. had shoveled, and that big hump of snow behind him is the Subaru.

Jack stuck close to Daddy as he extended the snow tunnel to the plowed road.

When I walked out the door after my shower to take pictures, the slamming of the front door resulted in a snow dump on my head from the accumulation on the roof.

Mia gets in everyone's way in constricted areas.

There's my sad and marooned minivan way up there by the road.

A. had to clear a path to his garage office. Another mystery: Why the hell, in this climate, wouldn't you have the garage open into the house?

Cubby tunneled away like a gopher, frequently getting buried in snow (it was very light, so no worries), but persevering nonetheless.

This is the view from our living room onto the porch. Cozy.

Mia more or less hasn't moved from this spot for two days. Can't say I blame her.

It's still snowing. It's supposed to snow all day today, and a little tomorrow morning. I suspect our total will end up being somewhere in the vicinity of four feet.

And that's the snow update. Over and out.

Ah, Memories

This unseasonable thaw that has melted all the snow has given me an opportunity to revisit a not-cherished childhood memory: The annual spring poop scooping.

This was a ritual from my Alaska years. We got a dog there, and in a place where it snows frequently and doesn't melt, then the dog's daily deposits just get covered over and hide there until all the snow melts.

It makes for an ugly scene in the spring.

This was not something we had to worry about at Blackrock, because the dogs went pretty far from the house for their toilet times. But here . . . well, old dog Mia is not about to venture too far off the shoveled driveway when there's two feet of snow on the ground. I can't blame her. I don't really relish the idea of a frozen bidet, either.

The end result of this, however, is dog-doo landmines all over the front of the house. So, although I don't much enjoy scooping up and discarding all those accumulated deposits, I did it today. Because you know what I enjoy even less? Cleaning dog poop out of the deep treads of winter boots.

Jack was very helpful during this process. He acted as spotter, standing guard and announcing, "One poo!" until I came over with the shovel for removal.

There were a lot of "one poos" around. But I think I managed to clear most of them. There is now a significantly reduced likelihood of poopy boots to be cleaned. So it was worth it. I guess.

The Romance Report

Well, we kicked off Valentine's Day by pushing A. out the door at 4 a.m. so he could make the five-hour drive to Blackrock with the dog in tow.

Okay, I didn't really push him. He went voluntarily, because he has a court appearance in that county today. I even got up to offer a mumbled "Happy Valentine's Day," and a limp hug before I stumbled back to bed.

I know. My devotion is really inspiring.

He has the dog with him because we're leaving Saturday for a week in Arizona (!), so Mia is going to stay with the MiL and Sky while we're gone. As irritating as old dog Mia finds Sky's relentless energy and attempts to play, she'll be much happier there than in a boarding kennel.

Cubby and Charlie have Valentine's Day parties in their respective classes today. Thankfully, I am not on the hook for any required treats for these parties, but I did, of course, have to provide the Valentine's Day cards for all the classmates. When I surveyed my choices at the grocery store, I found that my only non-branded option were cards that can be folded into paper airplanes. Since I have Big Issues with branded children's anything, I could not bring myself to buy anything with Barbie or Ninja Turtles on it. So airplanes it is!

When I opened the boxes last night so Cubby could write the names on them (and I could do Charlie's), I looked at the instructions and realized I am NOT going to be beloved of any parent who has to fold these things for their kid. They're all, "Fold A vertically to B, Fold B left to C" and on and on for an entire page.

Sorry, parents.

A. did one for Cubby and Charlie, and they are pretty good planes. If you can manage to follow all the directions.

Really, though, my only hope for today is that Cubby and Charlie actually GO to school. Charlie has been sick with a mysterious malaise for two days now, Jack woke up yesterday covered in vomit, and Cubby was complaining last night at bedtime that his stomach hurt. So if no one is throwing up today and the two older ones go to school, I'll consider the day a success.

Happy Valentine's Day, my lovelies! Doing anything fun to celebrate?

An Invigorating Morning Constitutional

This morning we woke up to ten degrees and about an inch of fresh powdery snow on top of the ten inches or so already on the ground. After we saw Cubby and Charlie off on the school bus at 7:20 a.m., A. turned to me and said, "Hey, want to go snowshoeing in the woods?"

And there was not a single reason why not. So we loaded Jack up in his pack, strapped on our snowshoes, and walked into the woods.

Robert Frost woods, right here.

It was a perfect morning for it. It was cold in the woods--probably right around zero--but no wind, and totally quiet. We scared up a few grouse, but otherwise saw no other animals. Mia spent much of her time shoving her face into snow drifts to sniff whatever captivating scents were under there. Jack rode along happily, and A. and I just moved right along the snowshoe trail that A. has forged on a mile loop through the woods around to the dirt road.

We made it back to the house by 8:15 a.m., with plenty of time to have some breakfast and for A. to have a shower before starting work in his garage office*.

We can't do it every morning, thanks to frequent adverse weather conditions, but when we can, it's a hell of a good start to the day.

* A. is probably the only attorney in the state whose law office contains a gun cabinet, several pairs of snowshoes, and a bed for the dog's night-time quarters. It's very amusing.

Two Unrelated Things

First, because I'm sure you were all consumed with curiosity about what I brought the plow guys: Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. And it was a supreme effort of will for me not to eat them all. I do not ever make cookies. Because it's always a supreme effort of will for me not to eat them all.

Now I just have to make a few loaves of bread for teacher/mail lady/neighbor gifts, buy some office supplies for the children's stockings (what, you wouldn't be thrilled to receive tape for Christmas?), and Christmas is good to go.

Second, I took Jack to the pediatrician yesterday for his two-year check-up and discovered that our pediatrician has a resident puppy. Name of George. Five months old (though surprisingly calm for such a young dog), half standard poodle, half Burmese mountain dog, all curly fur and big paws. Apparently, the doctor lives on the top floor of the building in which his practice is located, and the dog comes downstairs with him in the morning to hang out all day.

I thought this was swell, and so did Jack and Charlie, but I did wonder if all children are so happy to see an enormous black dog come wandering into their exam room.

Whatever. It was fun to see a random fluffy dog in a place that is not normally so fun.

And now I must go read a book to Charlie. I'm out.