On Hiatus

I won't be posting again until I can get outside to do something, anything, that is worth posting about, because I am tired of posting about snow, and of seeing snow, and of thinking about snow, and of taking photos of snow, and I'm really, really tired of complaining about snow.

In the meantime, please feel free to entertain yourselves with my new cozy mystery novel:

Stealing Home (a mystery without murder)
(Kindle version link)

Or you can get a print-on-demand trade paperback version here:

https://www.amazon.com/Stealing-Home-Alex-MacKenzie/dp/1726272311/

Or feel free instead to entertain yourselves with pictures of bored dachshunds.  Thank you for your patience.

Still Snowbound

People here keep telling me that this is the worst snow they've seen in over a decade, and I want to believe them.  I want to believe that I didn't just move to a place where I'll be housebound for weeks on end due to cold icy white stuff everywhere.  PLEASE don't let this be the new normal!

That was my driveway -- two-foot piles over a lot of it, which was too much for me to deal with, but luckily my mother called in former neighbor Dan, a sturdy fellow who I used to babysit back in ancient times.  Look what he did!

It took him a good three hours.

So now I can get to the street if I have to, though the street is covered with slushy snow and ice and I don't really want to go out there. 

I feared I might have to right after it got cleared, when I heard Pippin making weird hacking noises.  On investigation, he had tried to eat a 16" long piece of yarn from my needlepoint project, which he'd snatched off the coffee table.  He has some kind of bizarre oral fixation and will try to eat anything.  Several inches of the yarn was hanging out of his mouth as he choked on the rest, but luckily I was able to pull it all out.  He was bouncing around happily a few minutes later.  Whew.

The needlepoint of the Spring lighthouse is finished, thanks to my being stuck indoors:

I've started the Summer one, and am making tremendous progress.

As for art, one day I decided to paint the dang snow.  Or rather, not paint it.  I've painted snow scenes before, and the snow part is pretty easy -- it's just the white of the paper and all you have to do is paint around it.  You do have to add a few little shadowy places here and there for definition, but that's not too hard.

So I painted the view of my back yard, with tool shed:

Those lumpy clumps in the foreground are boxwood shrubs, encased in snow.  Everything is encased in snow.  And ice.  Once a day I've been going out to knock icicles off the eaves, which is most gratifying. 

The forecast for the coming week has highs in the low 30s, not enough to melt this stuff.  I may not get out at all, or do anything more exciting than knocking down icicles.  Sigh. 

Wherever you are, stay warm!

Snowpocalypse

Apparently I chose the wrong year to move here.  I'm told this is the worst snowfall in over a decade.  Lucky me!

Pippin loved the first snowfall we got last Monday, which was only about two inches.

He romped around in it, and dug in it, and it was hard to get him to come back inside.

 Truman, on the other paw, was Not Amused.

Pippin even tried to eat the snow. 

Truman remained unamused.

I had no trouble getting Tru to come inside.

But then the blizzard arrived at the end of the week.  I believe the snowfall was around 8 inches, but it came with a 20mph wind that blew all day long and piled the snow into two-foot drifts over pretty much everything.

This is a dog house left by the previous owner.  Needless to say, my dogs don't use it.  They get to stay inside where they belong!

They have a covered patio, which came in handy.  They couldn't do their business in the yard, due to the snow being deeper than they are tall.  Even the patio got an inch of wind-blown snow.

The eaves are a little scary right now.

I can't get out of the driveway, not that I want to, because the streets are not plowed yet.  I did manage to dig a path between my house and mom's next door.

It was a mission of mercy -- I had to take her some chocolate chip cookies.  She was all out!

This is the even scarier garage eave.  There's a satellite dish up there -- luckily it is still giving me TV signals.  Whew!

I had put on my snow boots and my waterproof pants in order to tromp through the two-foot drifts to get that photo of the eaves, and when I turned back towards the house, I saw poor Pippin trying to follow me.

He sank into the snow and I had to rescue him.  He is no longer quite so keen on the snow, and prefers staying on the sofa.

Meanwhile, I have NOTHING TO DO.  I read a lot.  I'm almost done with the lighthouse needlepoint.  I try to keep the Hounds entertained.  I stare out at the snow a lot, forcing my will upon it, telling it to MELT ALREADY. 

I did have a couple more photos from the antique mall, so I drew and painted them, but that entertained me for only about two hours total.

I suppose I could try painting snow, but somehow it does not inspire artistic feelings in me.  Mostly it inspires extreme annoyance.

Maybe I'll go knock down a few icicles to vent my irritation. 

I dearly hope that next Monday I'll have something else to post about!

Winter Is Coming

I thought I'd gotten away with a mild Winter here in my new locale, just a bit cold at times, but no snow.  Until now.  Well, I haven't seen it yet, because it's only 7am, but the forecast says:

WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 10 AM THIS MORNING TO 10 AM PST TUESDAY...Heavy snow expected. Total snow accumulations of 4 to 6 inches expected.

EEK!

Yesterday I went to the store and stocked up on groceries.  The dog food is shipped automatically every few weeks and that arrived recently, so we're good.  If the forecast holds, I'll have to miss my library gig, as the warning goes on to say we should stay off the roads.  And this could last a while, with temperatures in the high 20s/low 30s for the next two weeks.  

My plan is to read a lot, do needlepoint, and sketch stuff from photographs.  Drawing from photos is not my thing at all, but when needs must, the camera comes out.  I went to an antique mall this past week and took several pics of interesting displays to practice on at home, like this:

I even used some of the new art supplies I recently bought!  I also tried them out on a photo I took some summers ago of the Columbia River gorge area:

The resulting drawings look pretty much the same as the ones I typically produced using the old art supplies.  Hm.  If I want them to somehow look different, perhaps I should try radically different supplies, such as acrylic or gouache paint.  Hm.  Must ponder this more.

Anyway, that's the plan.  What about the Hounds, you ask?  Well, on Saturday I took them for a walk, which may be the last dog walk for some weeks.  We went to the Park at the Lakes, where there were lovely birch trees:

And a lake or two:

The waterfowl residents were quite lovely as well -- here is a wigeon eyeing a coot who has pulled up some tasty vegetation: 

And here is a Hooded Merganser being very reflective:

As for the needlepoint, I continue to make progress:

My plan for today is to go to the nearby hardware and sporting goods store as soon as it opens at 8am (before the predicted snowfall!) in a search for snow boots, while hoping that I never have to use them.

Finally, apparently there was a football game on yesterday, which I thoroughly ignored.  Instead, I had the Puppy Bowl on nonstop.  It was vastly superior to anything else on TV, and it kept Pippin entertained.  Pippin enjoys watching animals on TV -- he is especially fond of any nature documentaries that feature either big cats or rodents.  Here he is watching a wiener dog race:

He loved the Puppy Bowl.

Until next time, may you all stay dry and warm!