Blah, Blah, Blah.....

So who here is sick of winter?  ME, TOO!!  I've lived in the Midwest most of my life, and typically, I don't mind winter.  There's a peacefulness that comes with a heavy snowfall, a comfort that comes from being snug indoors under my favorite blanket with a good book.  This year, things were different.  High winds, extreme cold, not much snow.  When temps get too low, the only way to ensure your car will start when you need it is to run it for twenty or thirty minutes every few hours.  All night long, all day long.  Dog sitting was another adventure.  It has been so cold, the dogs don't even want to go out to potty, and it's just plain dangerous to walk them.  So my little puppy niece, Lily, has been getting into the kind of mischief dogs get into when they get bored:  shredding socks, tearing around the house, pestering her big sister.....

Pouty Miss Lily ~  she hates being cooped up

We didn't get a lot of snow this year, but we did have a couple small storms that dropped a couple inches at a time last week.  Unfortunately, we also had an ice storm, and that one was first.  So our streets are a mess of thick ice, rutted and covered with snow.  Over the weekend, the sun stayed hidden but the temps rose enough that the mess finally started melting.  That's the good news.  The bad news is, with all the ruts in the ice, the melt wasn't moving.  So we got out shovels and choppers and started chipping out ditches to the storm sewers, trying to drain flooded streets.  We're expecting one more warm day, and I'm hoping most of this water will be gone, or it will refreeze into another patch of ice come Tuesday.

Walker and my sister, hard at work ~