It's melting!

The snow is finally melting! Oh, joy! I think I might be able to get out in my car on Sunday if the current weather continues. Mick's truck had a lot of trouble on our hill today, because now that the snow is melting, it turned into a very thick, icy slush that is apparently more slippery than dry snow. I guess the consistency is more like very wet snow than slush, but whatever, there was lots of slipping and sliding even in 4-wheel low. Oh, it's hard to imagine that I missed the rain, but I guess I did! Freedom is close.

Boy, I can't imagine how early pioneers must have felt during those hard mid-west winters ... I mean, I was "snowed in" for 2 weeks and I am more than just a little irritable. I can't imagine what I would be like after weeks or months.

A Small Amount of Vindication

So, one of the many things mentaljr and I butted heads on was the cleanliness of his room. I tell you, that boy is messy. Whenever I would tell him to clean it, he arugued that it wasn't that bad, etc. When he finally broke down to clean it, he would spent some amount of time in his room, but nothing would be cleaner, just sort of rearranged, shoved under the bed or under other furniture. There would inevitably come a time, about twice a year that I would tell him that if he didn't actually clean his room, I would clean it. He would spend some time rearranging the garbage as usual and tell me his room was clean. I would say are you sure? He would assure me that yes, it was clean. I would go look, and of course, it would not be clean. I would say, OK, I am going to clean your room. He would be mad at me and yell that I was expecting perfection, blah, blah, blah. Usually, there would be some amount of time, say a day or a couple hours, between me saying I would clean his room and me actually doing it. You would think that he would take that opportunity to actually clean it, since he knew what was going to happen when I cleaned it, but nope. He just sulked.

When I cleaned his room, I usually took out several bags of garbage (broken toys, broken CDs, random bits of weirdness, things that I figured if he wanted them so much, he would have picked them up, candy, candy wrappers, other food items, gum stuck to furniture ...) and several bags of paper recycling (tons of pieces of paper with a partial drawing on it or some chicken scratch, again, if it was important, he should have picked it up off the floor). I was ruthless -- if it wasn't put away, it was garbage. (I don't literally mean garbage. Some of it would go to charity, or if it was a special, sentimental item, I would hide it away in his "special box," but most of it actaully went in the garbage because it was garbage.) He would come home (I usually did it when he wasn't home to avoid conflict) and be very angry and quiet. Whatever. I told him to clean up.

Now, mentaljr is out in the world on his own. Mick and I visited his apartment a couple of weeks ago. His room was literally six inches deep in stuff from corner to corner. Garbage was spilling out of his room into the hallway. Apparently, what we saw was "nothing," since his roommate had shoved the bulk of the stuff in the hallway back into mentaljr's room to make the apartment "look nice" for our visit. I reminded mentaljr about how he didn't want rodents to move in, and did he remember the time he shoved all that candy under his dresser and the mice found it and we had a bad mouse problem for a while because I didn't know about the candy stash? He said, yes, rodents are bad, blah, blah, blah.

So, a couple of days ago mentaljr told me that his apartment manager was going to give him 30 days notice if he didn't clean his room. I asked how his manager saw his room. He said that a worker came into install new closet doors in all the apartments, saw mentaljr's room, and reported it to the manager. She came to have a look and told him to clean it or move out. Apparently, she doesn't want a rodent problem, either. Mentaljr said he cleaned his room. Hmm. I've heard that before. I just hope he doesn't show up on my doorstep homeless in 30 days.

It just won't stop

The snow keeps coming down. I just don't think it's ever going to stop! Yesterday, I walked up to the local hardware store to get a snow shovel. I called them before I left to make sure they were open. The guy who answered the phone said "Yes, we're open." So, I headed out. I took this picture of the creek behind our house on the way.

Pretty! When I finally made to the hardware store, they were closed! A lady in the parking lot said they had just run out of snow shovels and decided to close. Argh. I was pretty ticked at having walked all that way when they said they were open. The snow was up to my knees anywhere someone else hadn't already made a path, so it was tough going. Oh, well, I got my exercise.

The snow was so bad that Mick couldn't get out yesterday. Well, his battery was dead, so that didn't help anything. His good friend Jerry came to the rescue and took him to the store to get new batteries (his truck takes 2 batteries). Jerry has a big 4-wheel drive truck and chains. Today, Mick put in a new battery, got all the ice and snow off his windows and made a go of it.

I was worried that he would have trouble getting up the hill.

But, he made it.

Look at these poor bushes, weighted down with snow. They are the type of bushes that grow really tall and skinny and straight, not the kind that have any sort of horizontal branches.


I'm going to walk to the grocery store now. It's 34 degrees by my thermometer, so maybe some of it will go away.

Happy Winter

Happy Winter Solstice! Today, the sun didn't come up until almost 8:00 AM, and is supposed to go down at 4:30 PM. That's a short day.

Look how much snow we got yesterday!

Don't worry. My dogs were not outside sleeping in their dog houses. They were safe and warm downstairs on comfy dog beds. This is a photo of the same area I took a picture of yesterday afternoon. It's really covered now!

This is a picture of the stairs that lead to the back of my house. It would probably be nice to take pictures of the woods behind my house, but to be frank, I don't really want to go out there right now. It's cold!

Random Things

Well, it's still snowing. I think we have gotten about 6 inches so far and it shows no signs of stopping. It's about 21 degrees F, which is very cold for Portland.

Here's some random pictures from my camera to amuse you. Let's first start out with a photo of Ben in the mud.

He's actually really happy there. Let's follow that with a picture of Kitty in a box.

I made new curtains for my kitchen so that the new floor we put down doesn't look so out of place. What do you think? These are the old curtains.

These are the new curtains.

I like the new ones. Do you see the loaf of bread on the counter? I made that using the proofing basket my lovely sister sent me. It turned out great now that I am not using too much water in the dough.
This is a picture of the snow that we got today at around 2:00 PM. It's much deeper now, but it's dark outside now, so the picture would be ... dark.

Shut In

Wow. I am still stuck in my house because of the snow! I was excited this morning because it was 35 degrees and the snow that was predicted hadn't fallen. I made plans to run out to Costco and Target and school. Then, about 9:00 AM it started to snow and snow. The flakes got fatter and fatter. Now, the roads that were almost drivable (by my inexperienced, non-4-wheel-drive-having, bottom-of-hill-living standards) this morning, were covered in a few inches of snow again. I was crushed.

Depending on which source you listen to, this weather could continue past Christmas. I don't know how I'll get to Costco. Yes, I am obsessed with Costco. Last night, Mick took me up to Fred Meyer in his truck to get a few essentials. I could hardly buy anything, because everything I looked at was so expensive compared to Costco. For example, at Costco I can get several pounds of shredded mozzarella (3 or 5 lbs, I can't remember which) for about $10. At Fred Meyer, just 1 pound of shredded mozzarella was $8! Mick just looked at me like I was crazy, since I had told him I needed to go to the store so bad and would he please drive me in his 4-wheel drive truck to the store, and then when I got there, I didn't want to buy anything.

I haven't done any shopping for the holidays. I don't know how I'm going to get it done. I could ride the bus everywhere, but I don't really feel like carrying home a 20lb turkey, gallons of milk, etc. on the bus. Boy, am I spoiled!

And for any of you who don't understand why I don't want to drive in Portland in the snow, here's a classic video that should clear things up for you.

Snow Day

I'm sure everyone in Portland is blogging the same thing today: It's snowing!

As you may be aware, it hardly ever snows in Portland. We maybe get 1 or 2 snows a year and it's usually just a dusting that melts right away or doesn't stick. Today is one of those rare snows that sticks and accumulates and is supposed to continue all through the day. Then, it's supposed to get really cold (for Portland), down into the teens and twenties for the rest of the week, which means the snow will probably stick around for a while. This is good and bad: good because it's fun and bad because we'll probably be snowed in for a few days. We live at the bottom of a hill in a residential area, so it's not a priority for the snow plows to clear it.

Chew and Ben are really enjoying the snow.



I keep checking on Chew to see if he wants to come inside, but he ignores me and keeps playing. It's nice to see him having fun. Ben is having the time of his life, too, barking at anything that moves.

Mick and I are relaxing, taking a forced day off from Mick's new fish and chip restaurant. We're watching the local news, laughing at all the idiots that are spun out on the freeways. The city is now requiring chains on all cars, but that doesn't seem to be helping, as most people are out there without them or causing problems by pulling over on the freeway to chain up.

Chew's new trick

So, my old dog Chew has a new trick. Because it rains a lot in Portland, I have two pretty nice dog houses for my dogs, since, in theory, they would spend quite a bit of time in them staying dry. Of course, Ben prefers to sleep in the mud. However, Chew is prissy for a dog and hates mud. He usually finds a nice dry spot or sleeps in one of the dog houses. Unfortunately, his new trick is that he poops in the dog house, and then, since he's so prissy, he won't go back in it and sleeps in the rain. I, of course, clean it up the next day, and the cycle begins again. This has been going on for a few days now. I wish that when he did it, he would figure out that he could go into the other perfectly good dog house that is not pooped in. Sigh.