I read a lot of Robert Frost in the winter. Much of what Frost writes reminds us of the natural beauty in New England and I need that reminder more than ever right now. I absolutely love winter, but I'm done with it this year. I don't want to whine about it anymore, but I just thought you should know that winter is kicking our rears this year. If you live around here, you already know that, anyway.
We finally became completely fed up with our Honda Civic and traded it in for an AWD Subaru. The morning after we drove the new (to us) car home, we got another four inches of snow. Thank goodness we bought that car! I wouldn't have made it to work otherwise! And now we don't have to walk a mile to get between our house and our car every day. We can drive right to our house. I bet you take that luxury for granted. As beautiful as the walk is, it is less fun when one is laden with groceries and an 11-month old boy.
Plowing has been a challenge for my dear husband. He's a stay-at-home Dad so he often has to wait until I am home from work to go out on snow removal duty. He is holding up admirably, though. He is a rock. Even on his most stressful, painful days, he gets up and does what needs to be done. Andrew is my hero.
Like I said, enough whining. We aren't the only one's suffering. For example, rats are really struggling this time of year. They are forced to find shelter wherever they can... like my bedroom, for example. YEAH, you heard me... A rat! In my bedroom! I heard a noise in the corner of the bedroom at 4:00 the other morning. I mumbled, "damn cat" and made a move to try to shoo him away from whatever it was he was playing with in the corner of the bedroom. I rolled over in bed to look, and I saw the cat, alright. He was walking over to the source of the noise to investigate it. If the cat isn't causing the disturbance, then...
I woke Andrew up saying something like, "The noise isn't coming from the cat! There's a thing!" Sure enough, it was a big ol' woods rat. My first thought was of the .22 upstairs. Is there a way to shoot a rat without also shooting a hole in the floor? I guess not. And then I felt bad for wanting to shoot it. Anyway, we were unsuccessful in our attempts to catch the poor little (huge) thing, so it's up to Merle to deal with the ginormous rodent, or we'll have to trap it. Ugh. There's something to look forward to.
I guess I didn't stop whining. I'm a liar. Oh well. We have Spring to look forward to soon. We are starting our onion and leek seeds this weekend. There is light at the end of the tunnel! And it's weird to think that I have a garden bed full of garlic somewhere under the five or six foot snow drifts in the yard. But soon the days will be longer, warmer, and filled with black flies. No, we mustn't think that way! No complaining about the bugs after a winter like this. It's gotta be better than snow, right?
