It has been quite a while since I heard a muse speak to me, even prior to recent events that left a splintering silence within my mind. My most recent, Eddie, went quiet quite a while ago, which still saddens me. His was a funny, dark story that I very much enjoyed. I hope he comes back to me soon, to finish his tale.

So I made very certain to pay close attention to this new voice. She’s left me no name so far. That doesn’t really bother me much. She can remain nameless if that’s her preference. Beyond a strange hatred of sand, which admittedly I share with her, she seems surprisingly…normal. I’m not used to that.

I’m not typically drawn to “whole” characters. In both my own writing and the creations of others, I’m constantly drawn to and inevitably fall in love with the most damaged of the lot: the widowed CMO, the emotionally scarred ex-freedom fighter, the alcoholic Viper pilot with the damaged past, the brooding CSI with Diastema and dark secrets, the FBI agent whose entire life hinges on locating a sister missing since childhood. There is beauty in their flaws and fractures that I simply cannot resist.

So to have a character come to me with relatively no imperfections? I’m baffled. And a tad bit concerned. Can I do her justice? We’re always tasked as writers to “write what we know.” I know imperfection. Truth is, I prefer imperfection.

Then again, the “what I know” at the moment is too much for me to write right now.

I visited my mom’s grave for the first time on Sunday. Her body is buried slightly fewer than 50 miles away from me.

In weiter Ferne, so nah!

The veterans’ cemetery has yet to place a proper grave stone for her. I’m actually thankful. The thought of seeing both my parents’ names on a grave marker is a bit more than I want to handle at the moment. His must be there because he is the veteran. She simply happened to be the first casualty.

So for the first time, I stood on the ground above my mother’s grave and glimpsed the vastness of something to which I’m nowhere near edging closer. That vastness is more than I may ever be able to wrap myself around properly. At least not alone.

Here, in my lair, this public forum of private mourning, there is solace in knowing that others read my words, that I have somehow shared my sadness without actually having to ask for permission. I apologize for the passive aggressive nature of my sorrow, but I suppose, in some ways, this is how I reach out. I have never found asking for help to be an easy task. The thought at one time used to frighten me into vocal paralysis.

Introversion is a difficult mistress and she will ride you hard and put you away wet if you allow her the indignity of that indiscretion.

But to broach these feelings alone, in the solace of my small writer’s world? Not happening any time soon, I’m afraid.

So for now I lean closer and listen to the whispers of my newest muse. She’s already made her story known to me, but I’m listening for those little clues that will lead me closer to understanding her in ways that will let me give her a proper home. Perhaps she will finally be the story I complete this year. One never knows…

I do apologize, though, denizens, for not explaining this beforehand. That was a bit rude of me, no?

So, yes, it was a long beachy weekend of eating deliciously bad-for-you foods, drinking bad-for-you drinks, and parking our butts under an umbrella and reading for hours while the soundtrack of waves against shoreline played steadily in the background.

It was wonderful.

I’m not by nature a beach person. Anyone who has seen La Loba knows that I am known as the White Wolf for many reasons, least of which is my Casper-like pallor. Even when slathered in SPF-OHMYGODYOUAREWHITE, I can still burn. Which is what happened this weekend. Strange patches of red on my ankles. A random streak on my shoulder. My earlobes (I honestly don’t think I’ve ever had sunburn on my ears before). And a frustratingly itchy red ring around my neck.

Yes, denizens. For the moment, I am truly a “redneck.” Please don’t hold it against me.

And now I’m back with my funky burn, reinvigorated freckles, and three new books for the Book Bin. Yes, I was gone for four days and I finished three books. Book reading nerdery, FTW. So stay tuned, denizens. Stay. Tuned.

Truth is, I feel as though I’m skirting the perimeter of my life right now. Things continue in my mental absence, but my focus is such at the moment that I can’t be bothered to acknowledge any of it. It’s why my inbox is filled with messages from friends and ImagiFriends^TM alike…and I can’t seem to focus enough to respond to any of them. Not with the depth they deserve. I’m not going to use this as an all-purpose generic way of responding, though. I will write back. I will.

And I will find my focus again. Right now, though, it feels too ephemeral, like spun sugar melting on the tip of my tongue. So I stop trying to reach what has decided to elude me. I let the muses in my mind go silent. Silence has never bothered me. It’s the clatter that presses against that silence that worries me. So I reinforce the silence with silliness. Like ordering a Wonder Woman T-shirt because I remember spinning with abandon as a wee pup, laughing and wishing more than anything for an invisible jet of my own. Or hanging Vulcan ears in the stairwell because I know they’ll make me smile every time I pass them.

Or watching YouTube clips from EastEnders and trying to piece together the puzzle of the delightfully disturbed Slater family because…well, because even in the excessive way of most soap operas (even the ones from Jolly Old England), there’s something there. Something intrinsically beautiful, especially in the fractured, fragile bond between Kat and Zoe, a mother/daughter relationship that, if nothing else, does indeed put the “fun” in “dysfunctional.” Besides, when all is said and done, love and family trump all else and, as Kat tells Zoe, “…it don’t matter. None of it. Because there’s a line, and it goes from me to you.”

Yeah. Not really hard to understand my sudden obsession with those wacky Slaters when you look at it that way.

I miss her every day. Every breath. With a severity that ebbs and flows, but always returns to the shoreline. I don’t say that often, but in my mind it feels like it’s all that I say, all that I do.

I saw my dad for Father’s Day weekend, the first time I’d seen him since I was there for her funeral. It was like seeing a person for the first time after an amputation. There was something missing, something gone that will never be replaced. It’s not like I’d never seen him without my mom around. We’d been on our own many times before, through all the myriad hospital stays she’d undergone since I was 10.

But those were like fractures to the bone, broken but with the promise of healing. In time. This time, the bone was sliced clean through, and all that was left were phantoms of what was once there.

Phantom pains and phantom presence.

My dad told me that, not long after my mom’s death, a squirrel appeared in the little wooded space behind their house. In the 6 years that my parents have lived where they are now, none of us had ever seen a squirrel there. It was always one of my mom’s disappointments. She loved squirrels. The house is still filled with all the squirrel paraphernalia she’d acquired through the years, either on her own or as gifts.

I remember the short period of time in which we had a squirrel as a “pet.” It had survived a fall from the nest when it was still too young to even have opened its eyes. My dad found it, brought it in, and we cared for it, squeezing formula into its tiny mouth with an eyedropper and keeping it in a shoebox until my dad could build it a cage from lumber scraps and chicken wire.

When it grew a little bigger, we realized “it” was a “she.” We named her Peepers, and for a while, she became part of the family. I can still see my mom standing in the square of sunlight from the kitchen window, washing something off in the sink while Peepers sat on her shoulder.

I don’t know how to process the appearance of the squirrel in their yard now that she’s gone. It’s a bit much for my overly rational side to try to assign it to anything more than just coincidence. But that portion of my soul that cries out to believe in the fantastical and the unexplained, the part that cherishes the message of undying love in books like To Dance With the White Dog…that part of me wants to believe that it’s more.

My dad seemed content to believe. And so that will be enough for me for now. That and Wonder Woman shirts and EastEnders clips and Vulcan ears and whatever else is required to extend the silence between the silliness and the clatter.

Okay, not me specifically. It was all part of her goofy on-air banter, her way of making her usually dismal news to us groggy Beltway commuters a little less soul-crushing. As much as I loathe my commute, I always love listening to her.

Truth is, the traffic report is pretty much all I can stand listening to anymore. Everything else sounds jumbled, confusing, off-key. Podcasts wash over me, the words trickling through the cracks in my concentration and flowing away without leaving any trace of their passing. Music? Dissonant and irritating, like pebbles stuck inside my shoes.

So I drive in silence most of the time, and I keep my brain from straying to places I’m not yet ready to go by watching the world as it zooms past Sammy’s windows. This morning it was all the joggers. Like the lovely older Asian man who jogs with the precision of Swiss watches. It’s not just his predictable punctuality but his movements as well. Strides perfectly measured, syncopated arm swings, even the towel always tucked around his neck seems to flop in pre-planned rhythm.

Or the gaggle of college girls crowding others to the side as they dominated the sidewalk, trotting along like sun-dappled mares with their upswept ponytails swinging in hypnotic unison.

It’s enough to make me wish once more that I jogged. Only problem is that my knees and back used to play softball in high school. I suppose the rest of me played as well…but my knees and back still remember those years the most. Still feel those years.

Sometimes I miss playing softball. I’d like to think I was good at it. I won a few awards from those years and when I was finished, I’d made it to shortstop, which I’ve been told is a pretty important position. Really, though, I played because it was in my blood. One of the first gifts I remember receiving was a whiffle ball and bat set and a little lefty glove from my three aunts, two of whom played on various softball teams for most of my childhood.

And then there were the hours that my mom and I spent playing catch. Even when there was very little else we could do together without tempers and tensions flaring, this was our oftentimes silent truce. I can still see our gloves in the hall closet, her full-sized righthander’s leather glove with my little pee-wee league lefty glove nestled inside it.

I remember how, for my birthday after the first year I made the school softball team, she had my dad drive her all over the place (this was well before the days of Sports Authority or Modell’s), trying to find a new lefty glove for me. She wanted to make sure I was ready for the next season, ready with a grown-up glove to finally replace the one I’d been using since 2nd grade.

I can still smell that clean, new leather, still feel the supple give of the grain as I slipped my hand into the glove for the first time. I stopped keeping my glove in the hall closet. Instead, it stayed in my room, usually with a softball tucked into it to keep its shape. I’d oil it regularly and often sit in my computer chair in the evenings, absentmindedly tossing a ball into the glove as I watched television. During softball season, I was very rarely without that glove on my hand.

It was around this point that my mom stopped wanting to play catch. My throws, even when I tried to moderate them, were too hard, too fast, and she was too proud to admit this. So she simply stopped playing.

I remember not long after I moved out, I was visiting my parents and needed to look for something in the hall closet. I happened to look down and there was my mom’s glove, still sitting at the top of the junk bucket, empty except for the dusting of cobwebs across the ball pocket. Too many years had passed by that point, but I still remember wishing that I’d had my glove with me, that we could go play catch once more.

I never saw her glove again after that. I’m not sure what happened to it after my parents moved a few years ago, although I strongly suspect that my dad might have tossed it during their pre-move cleanout. He views sports equipment with a special disdain usually reserved for politicians or fundamentalists (not hard to imagine I’m his daughter, eh?).

Perhaps I’ll ask him where her glove is next time I visit. Perhaps by then I’ll be back to listening to music and podcasts. Perhaps by then even innocent random observations won’t lead me down the very pathways I’d been trying to avoid through the observations. Perhaps.

Wherever you are, you will always be in my heart. –Mohandas Gandhi

It feels like whole galaxies separate me from this first day back at work and the last time I was here. Sitting in my boss’s office a little more than a week ago, saying words that I had refused to say to her before that moment. Refused to give them voice, because speaking them made them real. And making them real meant there was no return.

My mother is dying.

I don’t even remember what else I said to her after those four words. It’s all wiped, bright and blurring as a camera flash. All I remember from that moment on are snippets. Driving home to pack. Gassing up Sammy for the 5-hour drive. Halfway absorbing podcasts before switching over to music because none of the words I was hearing made any sense anymore.

Walking in to my parents’ bedroom and seeing someone lying in the hospice bed who didn’t look at all like my mother. Not at all like the woman I’d just seen that previous Monday, who even in her steadily diminishing state, had held on to me with a strength I didn’t expect. Held on like she was never going to let go.

I didn’t recognize the person in the bed. Worse yet is that she was already too far gone to recognize me. I talked to her, but she only stared through me, stared at something far beyond whatever it was I was babbling to her.

My mother was dying.

Whether or not I gave voice to those words didn’t really matter. She had already begun to leave us all behind. All I had done was delayed my own acceptance as well as my arrival before she’d gotten this far along.

There’s no point in giving details of that final day. You don’t need to know and I don’t need to remember. Truth is, I can’t forget. The memories wait right there at the edge of everything, and they do not rest.

The worst of it all was how she struggled to breathe. Everything about my mother’s life was a struggle, everything a fight right to the very end. But she was a stubborn woman, iron-willed and defiant in everything she did and everything she was. Even in her final hours, she wouldn’t relent. The hospice nurses didn’t understand how she was still going. I didn’t have to question it. She was my mother. I’d come up against that stubbornness all my life. I knew she wasn’t going to let go until she was ready.

My mother died.

And I can’t remember that house ever sounding quieter than when I walked back inside after the ambulance had pulled away. No more respirator. No more labored breaths or unconscious vocal exhalations. Nothing.

For 24 years, my father and I had watched my mother’s downward spiral, her slow but unstoppable journey toward this moment. Never would I have imagined her end would be like this.

The chaplain who spoke at her service referenced C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed, in which he writes of his wife’s passing from cancer. In this book, Lewis wrote of how memories of those we lose begin to fade like the melting of snowflakes. The chaplain wished for all of us the melting only of the darker memories, to allow the good to once more shine through.

Memories like how my mother loved Christmas with the fervor most of us lose to the passing of childhood. She loved family vacations and silly movies and singing along with the radio in a voice clear and strong as a perfectly tuned orchestra. She loved jigsaw puzzles and latch-hook rugs and every animal that ever came into the house instantly became hers.

She loved my father for 37 years. Knew that he was her husband, her guardian, her protector. Knew that “for better or for worse” weren’t just words to him, but a binding promise that he would never break. Knew that no matter what, he would never leave her.

She loved me with everything she had. Even through all the tangles and barbs of our complicated relationship (even more complicated than the mess that most mothers and daughters make of it), she loved me. My father has often said to me that I was the greatest success my mother ever knew in life. That makes me inexplicably sad, because all it does is makes me that much more aware of all the ways I felt I failed her. She had expectations for my life that I never wanted for myself. I realize now that they were more expectations for her own life that she knew she’d never experience for herself. So she wished them for me.

But I am my mother’s daughter. Her stubbornness runs strong through my veins. So I shut her out, closed down to her wishes, and tucked everything away that I thought would disappoint her. Wrapped myself so tightly that even I’m afraid of what will happen when the unraveling begins.

The cruelty of hindsight is that it’s only when it’s too late that you realize all the wrong choices you made.

Truth is, no matter who I was or what I did, my mother was my biggest fan. And I was never the fan that she wanted needed deserved.

No one will ever say my name the way she did, with that strange country twang that I never could understand coming from a woman born and raised in the D.C. area. No one will ever fill a room with laughter the way she could. No one will ever again respond, when I answer the phone, with the simple declarative, “It’s your momma.”

No one will ever love me with her same fierceness or pride.

No one.

Till time shall cease:
Sleep that no pain shall wake;
Night that no morn shall break
Till joy shall overtake
Her perfect peace.

{ from Christina Rossetti’s “Dream Land” }

When the moon is full, she hops the Riverwalk in search of a howling good time.

So some of you may have wondered where Loba disappeared to this time. Some of you may have just been happy for the break from my insanity. Those some of you suck. Just sayin’.

To those who were curious about Loba’s whereabouts, I can finally reveal that I was on a super-secret, Mirror Universe assignment to glorious Texas. Yes, I was indeed deep in the heart of Du(m)bya Country. It was everything I dreamed it would be.

Okay, okay, I’m not going to crack on Texas now. Truth is: A) I know some pretty decent folk from Texas; and B) I didn’t really get a chance to see much more of San Antonio than the severely touristy-kitschy Riverwalk section. It’s hard trying to sight-see when you’re on duty from 6 in the morning until around 7 or 8 in the evening. So, really, what we saw consisted of the hotel, the conference space, site visit stops, and a couple of restaurants (sorry, no partridge in a pear tree this time). I did get a chance to see the Alamo, though. No photos, but I can say I was surprised by how very small it was. True, it was cold that night, but seriously, I thought everything was bigger in Texas.

The cool part was that we were there for our conference at the same time as San Antonio’s Fiesta Week. So there were parades, parties, costumes, and (as one of our conference speakers described it) lots of “drunken debauchery.” Loba may or may not have found said debauchery. I’ll let the flashing bunny ears speak my story for me.

Anywhoodle. It was definitely a long week, but it went very well, and we capped everything off with a relaxing trip to Boudro’s, which is a restaurant literally built from awesome. Definitely had the best guacamole I have ever eaten. The wait staff are all trained in how to make the guacamole at your table. Here’s our waiter, doin’ the do for us:

Seriously, if you love guacamole, you would love this recipe. I’ve never had guacamole this freakin’ tasty. You can download the recipe from the Boudro’s Web site, but you’ll need to log on to get it. Pain, I know, but it’s worth it. Actually, though, you could also just watch this YouTube video. I love how Sarah the waitress states that she doesn’t want to see this video on YouTube. Sorry, Sarah. Looks like they lied. Hope they tipped you well.

And here, finally, is the money shot of our waiter’s enviable guacamole skills:

So, there you go. Now you know where in the world Loba San Diego wandered off to this time, and you’ve gotten a tasty guacamole recipe for your efforts. And stay tuned for some book reviews as well as possibly a DVDreg review this week (although I’m mortified by this one and am having a very difficult time finishing up the special features). See? I always make sure to take care of my denizens, even when I hop off for other climes from time to time

(Thank you to those two Carmen San Diego fans who still laugh whenever I pull that one out of my hat.)

Snow wears you down, denizens. Wears you down and wears you out. If I have to haul another shovel-full of sludge, I might snap. So I packed up a ditty bag and rolled out for “The Happiest Place on Earth.”

North Platte, Nebraska.

I keed! I keed! I’m not even allowed in the state of Nebraska ever since that horrible corn husking accident back in ’87.

…

Where was I? Oh, yeah…Orlando! No, not Bloom. Florida. Home of Disney World, which ironically I completely circumnavigated the entire time I was there. Any place that allows the congregation of that much “little people” energy is as scary to me as a crib notes-free palm is to Sarah Palin.

POKE THE BEAR!!!

I was a work stowaway, sneaking in under the watchful eye of others who had to work while Loba was there to play. It wasn’t quite as warm as I had hoped it would be, but anything above the freezing mark is going to be a marked improvement. Plus…I saw grass! And sunshine!! And I now randomly emphasize my words to sound more like William Shatner!!!

There’s something so comforting about Florida. It’s home to so many childhood vacation memories. All I have to do is get a whiff of that sulfur-scented water and I’m right back at 10 years old, brushing my teeth at the latest Days Inn we’ve stopped at for the night (because at Days Inn, Kids Eat Free!), getting ready for bed but too wired to sleep because I know in the morning, we’re going to ___________________ (insert any random Florida attraction name in blank)!!

For this trip, I went back to one of those attractions that my dad took us to that I don’t think I truly appreciated at the time: the Ringling Museum. Yes, the Ringling of Ringling Brothers circus fame. John Ringling, to be precise, and his lovely wife Mable. It’s a strange destination, I know, but my family has a special relationship with the circus (anyone cracks a bearded lady joke here and your ass is grass). Plus, in addition to circus museums, there’s a huge art museum, beautiful gardens, and the Ringlings’ house, Cà d’ Zan, which translates as “House of John” in Venetian. This house is gorgeous. You’ll see what I mean in a moment.

So bright and early on Tuesday, I packed up the rental (nowhere near as cool as Sammy, but it sufficed), and headed off to Sarasota. I love long drives, so I was definitely up for the 2-hour trek from Orlando. Besides, how can you not love a drive that takes you past Dinosaur Land? I wish I’d had my camera out to snap some shots for you of the giant imposing dinosaurs posed along the highway. It’s that kind of kitsch that lets you know without a doubt that you are indeed in the Sunshine State.

I started my tour of the Ringling grounds around 10ish and didn’t leave until around 3ish. And I still didn’t see everything. I don’t think it’s actually possible to see everything there in one visit though. Of course, I am also the person who has yet to see everything at the British Museum, yet I’ve been there three times.

This was also the first snow-free time I’ve had a chance to try out my new “Big Girl” camera. I used it mostly to take an architectural study of the house itself. But I took some photos around the grounds as well as around the outside of the art museum. I’ll refrain from boring you to tears and simply post my absolute favorites from the day:

Isn’t that horse head shot awesomely disturbing? Or disturbingly awesome? Whichever, I absolutely loved it. Oh, and the second image? That’s using the telephoto lens to get a shot of the design that goes around the top of the Belvedere Room, which is the very tip-top room of the mansion. Not a bad lens. I took about 70 shots in total throughout the day. So choosing was a difficult task. I have several others that almost made the cut. Maybe I’ll set up a Flickr account for the overflow…

After my three-ring circus afternoon, I headed back up the interstate, swinging by to visit with my ImagiFriends^TM at Castle Marius. Lightsabers and phasers may have been involved. As were cats. And possibly blood wine. I’m not allowed to say anything further by orders of the Admiral. Needless to say, it was the perfect ending to an awesome non-snow day.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end (so sayeth the final episode of TNG). So away we went yesterday afternoon, leaving on a jet plane that brought us back. To snow. I was strangely surprised to see so much still on the ground. I guess I was hoping/wishing it would all just melt away like the Wicked Witch. Instead, I’ve heard rumors that more is on its way next week.

Think I can get a flight out to somewhere else warm before then?

I feel like I’m stuck in a Forrest Gumpian storm right now.

We been through every kind of [snow] there is. Little bitty stingin’ [snow]… and big ol’ fat [snow]. [Snow] that flew in sideways. And sometimes [snow] even seemed to come straight up from underneath.

The entire state is under a blizzard warning. Wind gusts up to 50 mph. Not expected to stop until 7 tonight. Oh, and by the way, if you click on the photo to the right, look for the little black mark in the snow. That’s a park bench.

Needless to say, my office is closed again, as is the federal government. As is really most everything in the area.

I’m sorry to keep blathering on about the snow. I can’t seem to think about anything else. All this blinding whiteness has permeated my brain cells. All I see are glittery, flittery flakes. All I can hear is the cold, silent sizzle of snow piling on top of more snow.

I totally regressed this morning when I finally hauled my chilled bones out of bed. I made myself a bowl of Cream of Wheat. That was what my dad would always make me during the winter: Cream of Wheat, buttered toast, and hot chocolate poured into my special mug from Silver Springs in Florida. Home of the famous glass bottom boats. Also where six Tarzan movies were filmed, along with The Creature From the Black Lagoon and the television show Sea Hunt. Actually, quite a bit has been filmed at Silver Springs. Check it out.

I miss our annual family vacations to Florida. True, sometimes we went to major attractions like Disney or Sea World. But my dad had a proclivity for finding the places far off the beaten path. Places like Silver Springs or Cypress Gardens. Gatorland. Marine Land. My dad still has a collection of hats from almost every single place we ever visited.

One of the last trips we took together, we all went to Bok Tower Gardens, with their beautiful singing carillon tower and the tamest, plumpest squirrels I’ve ever seen. They’d skitter down the trees and amble over, waving their tail plumes in greeting as they came. Of course, if you didn’t have a peanut or two for them, you risked having one climb up your leg. Best to have some nuts for them.

I wonder what those squirrels would think of all this snow.

When I was 6 years old, my parents dropped me off at school. It had snowed the night before, enough to cause school to open 2 hours late. So at around 10:30, I climbed out of my dad’s Dodge Dart, the infamous “Yellow Submarine,” and headed into the trailer where my first-grade class took place. Only when I opened the door, the lights were off and the trailer was completely empty and cold.

I still remember that panic of thinking that I was about to be left all alone at my school. I remember jumping off the little porch to the trailer and running after my parents as they drove away, crying out for them to stop.

I also remember the patch of ice that I hit, and how said patch projectile-rocketed me about five feet forward and to the right of my dad’s car. Thank goodness it didn’t shoot me completely straight. I might still be sporting a Dodge symbol scar on my forehead.

My parents thankfully heard me, as did the teacher in the trailer two down from my class’s trailer. Seems that he was supposed to be watching for students and telling them to come to his classroom. Seems he sucked at his assignment. Such is life.

To this day, however, I have an innate fear of ice. Pardon the pun, but I freeze on ice. Feeling the terrain slip beneath my feet puts me right back at 6 years old, shooting across the parking lot in a panic as my parents drive away. It totally sucks.

Kind of like unending snow. Ha! Didn’t think I could bring this one back around, did you?

Yeah, I’m just going bat-shit crazy at this point. But I’ve just found a CSI marathon on SpikeTV. Looks like they’re playing good episodes from early in the series. The Grissom Years. Ooh, and this episode stars Kate Vernon, she soon known as Ellen Tigh to BSG fans. So I must jet. I’ll probably be back though. It’s not like I’m going anywhere else today…

This was Sammy yesterday as the snow was still falling. Like his windshield wiper horns and his snowhawk? He’s now at least dusted off for the most part, but the snow drifts all around him come up to his windows. I’ve kind of cleared a path along his starboard side, but my muscles revolted at the thought of tackling the port side. Just like everything revolted when I fell into this snowdrift yesterday:

Yeah, I’m not a short person, so when you see me standing in snow higher than my thighs, you know things are going to be a bit shit. Kind of like Queen Elizabeth is a bit royal or curling is a bit Canadian.

Again, though, it is pretty to watch. From inside. With coffee and Rice Krispy treats and a feckin’ awesome telephoto lens. Here, then, are some highlights of the past two days. Then it’s off to have some lunch and back outside. The Bobcats have arrived to help dig us out, so maybe it won’t be too terribly bad. I just have to keep telling myself that.