Round Two Thousand Five Hundred and Thirty Eight

Ya, it snowed again yesterday. Started out raining a whole lot and as the afternoon wore on it turned to snow.

That is what we had when I went to bed around 11 and it was still coming down like crazy.

When I woke up this morning it was sunny and beautiful outside so even though I'm totally OVER the snow I had to take some pictures. It was all foggy outside too, very pretty.

The snow was really wet and heavy and falling off the trees very quickly. I had to dodge falling snow to take this picture.

Ok, that's all. Enough snow. When is summer?!?

March

Well, March has certainly come in like a lion. A really cranky, manic-depressive lion with bad ju-ju and possibly multiple personalities.

In one weeks time we've had sunny, blue skies and 60 degree absolutely beautiful weather, wind, rain, showers, more rain, thunder storms and now snow. As I am typing this it is dumping snow and going on 2 inches accumulated. Over the weekend it would go from sunny blue skies, to wind to snow to hail and back to sun every half hour or so. I swear I'm only exaggerating a tiny bit.

It's March 9th for crying out loud. It's not supposed to be snowing any more! Am I imagining things that not that many years ago we could get thru an entire winter and not see one single snow flake? I know last winter it snowed quite early (around Thanksgiving) and quite late too (at least the end of Feb, if not into March). And it snowed quite a bit last winter, just like it has this year. I'm not liking this trend.

Have I mentioned I'm ready for summer? I'm really over the snow.

ps - weekend update coming soon! I went to a working cowhorse clinic. SO. MUCH. FUN!!!

Hibernating for winter

What is it with this time of year and my complete lack of motivation to do...well, pretty much anything?

It's annoying, that's what it is! I'm sick of it. I'm tired of being in hibernation mode. I want to not have to fight with myself to get something done in the evening. I want to be able to go out and jump on my horse when I get home from work and not dread the cold or decide I don't feel like being out in the weather because I'm a weenie and bag the whole idea. Again. I want to look outside at the sun and blue skies and not get shivers because, while it is a nice day, I know it's also 20 degrees out there. I want to see green leaves on trees and flowers coming up and hear birds chirping. I want to have more then 45 minutes of day light when I get home, though that is an improvement over the 3 minutes of daylight I had just a month ago. I want to be able to wear my new heels (see previous post) without having to worry about stepping in a mud puddle with them or my feet turning purple in the 15 seconds it takes me to walk to my truck because I don't have thick socks on and it's freezing cold out.

I miss my horse. I miss seeing more then her head and her legs from the knees down because she's all bundled up in her cozy water and weather proof blanket. I'm ready for her to not be a muddy, extremely hairy mess. Not looking forward to the actual shedding part, but I'm definately ready for the summer coat.

I'm tired of winter. I'm tired of cold. I'm tired of darkness. I'm also just tired. I want summer already! Or atleast spring. I need some vitamin D.

On a not so depressing note...it's only partly cloudy today, no precipitation in the forecast and a somewhat mild 40 degrees. I might actually stay motivated to get on my horse tonight. Yeehaw!

Brrrr!

I think maybe I was meant to be a southern Californian.

It has been darn cold around here lately. Most mornings for the past week or so it's been 27 degrees. This morning, after I froze in the 10 seconds or so it took me to get from my house to my truck, the temp gauge in my truck said 27 and then started dropping as soon as I pulled out from under the car port, eventually bottoming out at 23. 23!!!

Now, I know I'm just a big weenie and it could be a lot worse, and was just a few weeks ago, but that is just way too darn cold for me. I'm more a fan of a nice 75+ degrees. Hence why I think I belong in So Cal right now. Even though I'm not blond (and don't ever plan to be) and everything on me is 100% real, I still think I could fit in just fine down there. :-)

Sun!

I was SO excited to wake up to sun yesterday morning!

It's been foggy and gray and gloomy around here all week, so Sunday morning when I woke up to a strange bright light in the sky, I could hardly wait to grab my camera and enjoy a bit of it.

Actually, I have to admit, I was a total camera nut yesterday. It's going to take me a while to go thru all of the pictures that I took, but here are a few from my first trip outside. In my jammies. Because I had to catch the early morning sun. Like I said...camera nut!



Unfortunately, with the clear skies came the cold. I don't like wearing gloves while I'm taking pictures, so my hands were pretty much popsicles by the time I came back in. At first I just went out in my slippers and a sweatshirt. That only lasted about 5 minutes.



I had tons of fun taking TONS of pictures though and it didn't take too long to defrost when I got back inside so it was a great day!



And I've discovered my new favorite thing...taking pictures of the sun. It's a bit of a challenge to get it to peek thru something just right for the picture, but boy did I have fun experimenting!

I wonder...

...does Mother Nature get P.M.S.?

I think she must. Why she has chosen Western Washington to pick on for the past few weeks I'm not sure, but I do know that she is being rather nasty. First there was rain. Then there was snow. Then there was melting snow. Way below freezing temps. Ice. More snow. More ice. Rain. Rain. More rain. Some wind thrown in for kicks. Then more snow. Then non stop rain on top of suddenly warm temps causing way too much snow to melt and come gushing down the mountains. Add that to lots more rain and we've got quite a mess out here!

I'm very thankful that it was rather soggy and near flooding when we were house shopping so that we were concious of how wet any land that we looked at got. Our house is up on a hill and the whole property slopes just enough that it doesn't get too terribly soggy. Atleast I hope not. I guess we'll be finding out for sure here shortly. There is a creek that runs thru the front of our neighborhood that is now more closely resembling a raging river and I think I heard we have a new lake down there too. Things are getting pretty dicey down here by my work too. Sounds like there are evacuations going on all around me. Good times.

Could someone please tell me where I might be able to locate good ol' Mother Nature so I can pass along a big bottle of Midol? Thanks!

My Midori

While I was out taking pictures of the snow, Midori decided to come say hi. She's usually pretty camera shy, which is the one characteristic that I can surely tell you is not like her "mom" (me).





She let me take quite a few pics before she got completely bored of me. I credit the new camera. :-) I can't wait to take more pics of her when she's not a shaggy, hairy, soggy mess!





Speaking of a shaggy, hairy, soggy mess...here she is in all her glory. She is perfectly dry and warm under that blanket, believe me, I check. A lot. But still: barn is priority this summer!!!!!! We are pretty darn sick of the hair (and dreading shedding) and swear next year they are getting lights, heaters, heavy, heavy blankets, the whole 9 yards because they will not be hairy next year!!! Maybe.



Here she is with the sun behind her. She was drying off a bit.





Here she is trying to decide if I'm really important enough to come say hi to. Notice Sugar peeking at me under her neck. Sugar is a peeker. I rarely see her look up and over the fence, she always peeks thru it. She's funny like that.





Midori finally decided to walk over and see me and she was greeted with a big glop of melting snow from a tree above falling right on her head.

She still stayed and visited for a few minutes.

I love my pony. And I love horse's eyes. Can you tell? :-)

More snow!

We got more snow the other night. It was a complete surprise to me this time as the last forecast that I saw only included rain, rain and more rain. I wasn't terribly upset about it though since I had a long weekend ahead of me, no commuting required, and I didn't have anything better to do with my time then go out and take pictures with my new camera! I was particularly thrilled when I saw that there were also sunny blue skies. Wohoo!

So almost 200 pictures and very numb fingers and toes later, these are some of my favorites.

Chey had fun digging things up to play with. Crazy dog!

The ponies weren't so amused by the snow. They were actually pretty darn soggy.


This threw me for a loop. The snow was accumulated on the bottom of the rails... ??? How does that even work?

Rain, rain, go away!

Far, far away!

Seriously.

I don't know which is worse, rain or snow. Snow is atleast pretty and mostly dry while it's freezing a$$ cold out. Though it does totally suck to drive in and being house bound for any length of time is not so much fun. But rain this time of year is just miserable. Especially rain and wind! It's cold and wet and wet and cold. And ugly and gray. And wet. Oh, and it's cold too. It makes driving oh so fun in it's own way, but atleast it's not completely debilitating to my commute like snow can be. I am very glad that it's alteast a few degrees above freezing and I was thrilled when I woke up to most of the snow melted a couple days ago! It's pretty and fun to look at for a couple days, but I was really over it. I was also very happy to be able to go out and feed the horses without having to take 10 minutes just to get bundled up enough that I'd be able to feel most of my extremeties when I got back in. Cutting out a good 20 minutes of busting up ice in water troughs was nice too. Not that I did much of that. I did stand there and hold the flashlight for the boyfriend while he did it though.


Now that all the snow has melted and it's supposed to pretty much pour for as many days as the weather forecast shows, I'm not looking forward to the state of my ponies' paddocks. Or my mental health. Does anyone else have just a touch of cabin fever? Wow. I had 5 days off in a row because of Christmas and even with all of the hustle and bustle of celebrating I still got some major cabin fever. I was pretty well fried by the fifth morning. I do enjoy relaxing and being a lazy bum for a little bit, don't get me wrong. But I think it's part of that whole "you always want what you can't have" thing. The weather was keeping me inside, since I'm a total weenie, and I wanted more then anything to be able to be outside and get some sun. Thankfully, the weather changed a bit yesterday so I was able to get a little fresh air. It was only for a few minutes, but it made a huge difference. The sun even peeked out for a bit! Back to gray and rainy today though. I have caught a couple glimpses of blue sky, but it never lasts very long. It should be an interesting couple of weeks.

Our poor horses are already looking like drowned rats. Makes me feel really bad for not getting them some sort of shelter other then big blankets and trees to hide under. Hopefully they forgive us. Summer goal this year: finish the barn!!!


Which brings me to a bright spot in all of this...we are past the shortest day of the year! It's only going to get better from here on out! Atleast for about 6 months. That is such a huge relief! We're on the down hill slide into summer! Wohoo!!! I'm ready! I can't wait for summer to get here!

ps - I got a super snazzy new camera over the weekend. I'm sure pictures galore will be here shortly! Well, maybe once the weather clears up...there aren't so many interesting things to take pictures of in the house. And while it does have a lot of zoom, I'm still on my macro kick and taking pictures of things outside from inside just isn't all that much fun.

Snow!

I can't decide if I like the snow or not. Generally I'm a big fan of it. It's very pretty and, if I decide to not be a complete weenie, it can be really fun to go out and play in. I do love a good snow ball fight or sledding adventure every once in a while.

The last couple years though, I've been perfectly content to sit inside and more or less ignore it while I hibernate. Now that I am older, snow can be very annoying. At our old house, traffic was hell if it snowed. I was expecting more of the same, or maybe worse since my commute is twice as long now, but was pleasantly surprised by how light traffic was on Wednesday, the first morning waking up to snow. I made it in to work in almost record time. It's times like these that I'm very thankful for my truck and definately not willing to part with it, even though it's hardly practical to drive a 3/4 ton lifted truck for my 60 mile round trip commute. My truck is heavy with good tires and four wheel drive. Even when I try to "test the roads" to see just how bad they really are, my truck hardly goes any where. I've never had a single problem with it in the snow (finding wood to knock on now).

Last year, when the highway that used to get me to and from work was a big sheet of ice and there were cars slipping and sliding all over the place, hitting curbs, going in ditches, stopping at lights and not able to get going again, I just put 'er in four wheel drive and wound my way thru the carnage so I could get back home. I did feel a little guilty for just going around the little old people in their Cadillac trying to make a turn on a slight incline with tires spinning, but what was I going to do?

Anyways, traffic and trying to get to work just plain sucks when it's snowing. Surprisingly, my new commute isn't as crazy bad as my old commute and I've managed to make it in in one piece, in decent time with only minor irritations both mornings that I've tried, but it still puts a damper on my enjoyment of the fluffy white stuff. I want to like it, I really do. I try to be happy when it's in the forecast and enjoy it while I can, but it's hard when I'm anticipating the hell on earth that is commuting in the snow.

I decided to call yesterday a snow day, mostly because I really was a little sick, so I did get a chance to enjoy it some. I ran outside to take some pictures during a break in the snow where the sun actually peaked out a bit. The ponies aren't so happy about the snow and were happy to come say hi to me for a minute. Cheyanne got to go out and play in the snow for a bit and I think she had fun, though she did seem a little hesitant to really get out in it much. I think she was perfectly content in the house for most of the day. She followed me around while I was out there, but most of the rest of the time she was out there I think she just hung around on the porch under cover.

Later in the afternoon the boyfriend got a little stir crazy and decided we needed to go for a drive. We had planned to get a little Christmas shopping done, but once we headed out it started snowing like crazy and it looked like everyone was trying to beat it home because there was traffic every where. We gave up on the Christmas shopping idea pretty quickly and decided to just make a little loop that would normally have taken us maybe 45 minutes. It ended up taking us 3 1/2 hours. Roads were being closed, cars were going in ditches and sliding back down hills or pulling off to chain up before going up hills. It was bad. Finally, after a tour of almost every single back road in existence between home and "town" we made it back home where 2-3 inches of new snow greeted us. Sheesh! Talk about bad timing.

I'm planning to enjoy the snow this weekend. I really want to. We still have a little bit of Christmas shopping to do, but it should be fairly easy. Hopefully I can have a little fun with the snow while it's here!