Neighborhood Squirrels Aren't Afraid of Snowguy

They sneak up behind him... it.

February Snowperson Challenge

I didn't intend it to be funny... or creepy. I intended it to be fun, with the twist of a neighborhood challenge. Kids simply don't get outside enough these days (IMHO). So earlier this week, when the weather was just right, I rolled this snowguy and posted a challenge for others to make some. I imagined our neighborhood lined with snow creatures. Sadly, not true. But at least I can share this with you all.

My son thinks the face I gave the snowguy is creepy. DH agrees. What thinks you? (Did you notice the snow earmuff to keep his ears nice and cold?) Maybe I should add a wig and bikini. Would that make it less creepy? Maybe I'll roll a snowhorse next to him for the March Neighborhood Snowthing Challenge.

(I had a very lonely childhood.)

Survival Camping with Childen

We're buried under about a foot of new snowfall. Beautiful stuff, that. So as I'm tidying up inside our toasty warm house, listening to the sounds of neighbors' snowplows, I came across a palm-sized survival pack I'd put on the dining room table a couple weeks ago. (FYI, we only eat at the DR table when company comes; other than those times, it's up for grabs.)

Seeing the survival pack made me smile. I'd made one for each of the four of us in our family for when we'd go camping. We'd often take all-day hikes through the Canadian wilderness (pre-cell phone days, not that there's a tower anywhere near there now, anyway). It was just a nice security knowing we each had essential things in case we got lost, like a tin cup for drinking or cooking, sealed and dry matches, bandaids, toilet paper, string for fishing, etc..

During one of our first camping times after making these, while my hubby and I set up the tent, we noticed our three- and six-year-old were missing. We were in a new campground, hilly, wooded, ravined. Naturally, as soon as we parents noticed our boys were not in sight, we dropped our tent poles and started jogging around the area calling for them. After a couple minutes we heard one of them from a ravine next to our site. My heart nearly stopped, imagining them dead or injured at the bottom. Nope. Not our survival savvy boys.

Our older son decided to use the survival kit to help our younger son up the ravine they'd climbed into. OS had one end of the three-foot-long string. YS had the other end. DH and I affirmed their good thinking, then went back to setting up our tent while our children played in the wilderness nearby.

Moving Vehicle Joke

Driving down the road last week, we saw an ambulance on a tow truck. My husband commented, "Oh, look! An ambulance for an ambulance."

How to get your canary to stop singing

There is this story of an elderly woman who took her canary to the vet, explaining that he no longer sings.

"Did you leave the window open? Have you gotten new pets or had visitors? Has anything unusual happened?"

"No. No. And no. I just don't understand it."

"When did he stop singing?"

"The last time I cleaned his cage."

"What happened then?"

"I decided to clean the bottom of the cage with the vacuum cleaner. Well, Birdie flew down to investigate, and got sucked up. I thought I'd killed him, but when I cut open the bag, I found him covered with dust, but still breathing -- just barely. So I took him and put him under the water faucet and washed him off real good. Then I used a hair drier to dry his feathers. He looks fine, but he hasn't sung since that day."

Don't Jump to Language Conclusions

When relatives from Sweden visited the US, they didn't speak English, and my mother-in-law didn't speak Swedish. She showed the relations what she'd cooked for supper. One of them answered, "Shit burger," at which point my MIL, became understandably upset. The air was cleared in a few minutes when my Father-in-law explained what sounded like "shuut buurger" in Swedish actually means "meatballs."

Under Winter Storm Watch

The battering of the east coast today reminds me of when we lived in a small town in NW Iowa. Before any storm, people crowded to the stores. People followed others around the parking lot just to snag a free shopping cart. Milk and egg and bread products were the first to go, for with only a couple inches of snowfall on the wind-swept plains, drifts could be building-high with roads closed for days, meaning no trucks bringing in things like milk and eggs and bread products.

So when we moved from IA to western NY, the first time I heard a weather report of a squall coming in, I packed up our kids and rushed off to the closest convenient store, hoping to get there before the crowds, and because it was a small store, maybe tons of people wouldn't think to go there first.

Besides the clerk, we were the only ones there. Thinking the shelves had already been stripped clean, my heart sunk as I rushed to the back of the store. To my surprise, there was hardly a dent in the well-stocked milk and egg and bread areas.

"But a squall's coming!" I nearly shouted to the clerk, handing him my load-up-to-hunker-down foods.

"Yeah?"

Seems squall in Western New York meant "some lake-effect snow possible," which happened nearly every winter day in Buffalo, a town and suburbs well knowing how to handle snowfall.

Who Listens to Whom?

Last week, my husband was correcting me about something I'd told him.

DH: I do listen to you. The trouble is, you don't listen to yourself.
Me: I do so listen to myself. I just don't remember what I said.