Snowball

Snow was predicted here last night and into today.   It was a confusing prediction with snow happening heavily at temperatures a bit above freezing followed by rain, then snow, then rain, and temperatures never really dropping below thirty-two.  Given the temperature and the rain involvement, I didn’t expect accumulation and yet there were estimates of three to six inches.   I’m synthesizing this information across multiple weather apps/services which were significantly differing in each area of their predictions.

But snow did happen and when we woke up around dawn we had four inches-ish of snow.   The children were excited.   The dog, well, I wasn’t so sure about.   Was she going to refuse entirely to step into the fluffy white stuff or would she bound into it gleefully and refuse to come inside?

It turned out to be the latter, with the dog not wanting to come inside at all today.   I think she’d still be out there now if we hadn’t insisted she come in.   The snow early morning, before the rain started, was of a sticky sort and stuck to the dog’s fur in little clumps.   Then, just like what happens when you roll a small snowball around in the snow to make a big snow ball, the clumps on the dog’s legs and under her belly got larger and larger.

She came to the door with a strange gait and when I picked her up, thinking I’d shake off the snow, I realized she had so much snow attached to her fur she couldn’t walk straight.   She’d almost turned herself into a canine snowball.  It took five minutes in the tub with the hand sprayer to get the snow to melt and release from her fur.

With the dog now half wet, I took her in front of the fireplace, thinking she’d be cold and hopeful she’d stay there and warm up.   But she wasn’t cold.   She ate some food and then, with her fur still damp from the snowball removal, she wanted to go back outside with the children who had now had their first round of hot chocolate and were ready to attack the white coverage in the yard again.

By now there was some rain happening and the texture of the snow had changed, leaving the dog’s fur free from clumping with snow.   She followed the children around, dove into the snow, jumped off the brick wall into the powder and didn’t want to come inside.

Eventually when all the children came in and the rain was heavier, making the snow less fun to play in, the dog came in and then had a nice nap on the bathroom floor—because it’s the coolest place in the house.   We almost named her Snowy but decided on Matisse instead.   I’m wondering if we made the right choice after seeing how much she loves snow today.

The Big Boy Update: The power was off for about four hours today.  My son fell asleep in his sleeping bag on the floor in the living room.  When he woke up he said, “this is all so boring, having no internet and no power.:

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter took a bath yesterday.  It started with us washing she dog and ended some hours later with her finally getting out.   It was over two hours, maybe three.   Her brother joined her in the end when he heard she’d added Mr. Bubbles to the bath.  My husband came in in time to save the bathroom floor from bubble overage and took this picture: