Well, the lightweight fluffy stuff they told us about last night turned out to be wet and heavy, but the van I left near the mouth of the drive made it through the snowplowed driveway ruts just fine and is now safely stowed out back where the kindly plowman left me a little spot out of the way of later passes to come as needed.

Hardi wisely stayed downstate at the clergy conference last night and so did not risk his life (and my heart attack) trying to go over the deadly mountain on the way home. :~) Faulkner and Ruby are surprisingly energetic watch dogs when he's away; they're on the job effectively even when the person coming to the door is someone they know well, if I don't reassure them I was expecting company. I've always wondered if Mudcat Gatherings and open-door policies with friends would change that. But they're quite a team-- one barks as big as a Great Dane and the other slides silently toward intruders to seriously stop them. That dog may be a couch-potato, but on the job he's like a missile from a potato cannon and since he started eating so well, he's quite heavy as well.

Later today I will take an ice-chopping tool to soften up the piled-up snowbanks between driveway and back door, so he can actually get to the door when he makes it home. :~) I think Faulkner will be helping me by dog-wiggling a path through the deeper drifts, and then we'll both curl up by the gas heater to warm back up! :~)

By 10:15 I was able to call shut-in friends to see if they needed me to come over or deploy any other assistance. The road, of course, is not exactly bare, but a car goes by every once in awhile, and anywhere I really need to get would be a short trip on a relatively flat road.

OK, so the car-clearing longbrush is still out in the shed on the other side of those snowplow piles (along with the assorted snow shovels). Ooops. I thought all the equipment was on the back porch. Hardi will be gratified to have a few Man Against the Elements tasks awaiting his return! :~)

The funny thing of the day so far was the neighbor, across the creek, calling her dog back in. The dog is about the size of a large squirrel, so he was not visible from her back door (or our driveway). I'm sure he tunneled his way back to her eventually, but it was so funny hearing the tone of her mystified voice! The sunless white of the snow is too nondescript to show it from here right now, but I bet when the sun returns there'll be a large, clearly-etched "mole" tunnel across their backyard snow!

~Susan