Day 47

Well, I think today's snowstorm incorporated all the different Inuit words for snow - there was softly falling snow, little round bullets of snow, wet sleety snow, fat sticky flakes of snow, snow blasting down, floating down, drifting up again!  It was snowing so fast that when Nick, his friend and I cleared the driveway so that I could fetch Matthew for work and take them all to the Y, by the time we got to the bottom the top was snowed over again!  Like Albert's Bridge!  

I didn't run today because Molly's left front leg is still a bit stiff and sore from our run on the beach, I think, and I didn't want her making it worse.  I hauled wood and gathered pine-cones and kindling like a good pioneer woman, and then shovelled a great deal, so I had my exercise anyway.

When I went to fetch the boys 3 hours later, a trip which usually takes 20 minutes, took an hour, although I did take their friend back to his home in Manchester as well (today's kindness).  The roads were thickly coated with snow, snow flying at your windscreen so that you can imagine you're going at Star Trek's warpspeed even though you're moving at about 20 miles an hour. 

When we came to our driveway, into which one has to take a flying leap in first gear, over the snow-plough bank, then a twist of the steering wheel to get up the hill, I found myself instead skidding to the right side, then the left, narrowly missed hitting a tree, and in a kind of crab-like move, my car slid itself perfectly into the first parking spot! Our driveway always makes for an exciting adrenaline-rush arrival home in snowy winter!

So this is a self-portrait as a six-sided (which is how many sides every snowflake has) snowflake, in honour of the snowstorm today.  I learnt how to make these a few years ago, in order to teach my students how to make "winter vacation" cards, because it is not PC here to say Christmas cards, so I had to think of something not exactly to do with Christmas.