lions, lambs, and cats

How great are all you people!! You showed such concern for me, buried as we are under giant piles of snow...I kid, really....sort of. The snow has melted a little, thank goodness. We can actually almost see over the piles to safely back out of our driveway now, which is always a plus. We passed the first official day of Spring with more snow in the air, but at this point I think everyone around here is on shovel strike, so unless a foot of it is landing, we shant be worrying about clearing the sidewalks any more this season. Really though, thanks to all of you for being so concerned, I was quite touched.

I have nothing on the F.O. front this week. I haven't worked on anything for almost a week, being so pouty about the snow and all, and it has a lot nothing at all to do with my spending more and more time on Ravelry, or anything to do with the fact that I have fallen in love with another man....It's shameful, self-destructive, and forbidden, but I just can't help myself, I'm a sucker for a cool loner, a rebellious type of guy:


Meet Jack, my MIL's cat...and my forbidden boyfriend. I've never been the type of gal who was a 'cat person', in fact I quite hated cats at one point in my life. When I was 14 years old, I was babysitting down the road and they had this evil ginger tom that used to jump up in my lap out of nowhere and take a swipe at my face at least twice a night. One night I was leaning over to pick up the baby to change her and the malevolent thing actually jumped me from behind and dug it's claws into my back, causing me to straighten up and scream (silently--it was like 1 am) and walk/run down the hall, ping-ponging off the walls with the thing still attached to my back, trying to bite either side of my neck. I managed to get the loathesome thing off me (got a lot more scratches and bites, too) and shoo it down into the basement and shut it in, then I called my mom and cried and told her she had to come rescue me....I still have nightmares about that one...plus I'm really quite allergic to cats...lucky for me, those people didn't go out much, and once I told them I was allergic, they made sure "Satan the-orange-haired-hell cat" was confined to the basement whenever I came over. Now I have known some really nice cats too, my best friend's cat Chevy was the nicest, most gentle cat ever--he snored louder than my dad!--and he would always lay down beside me and look up at me and put his paw on my leg as if to say "you can pet me now, so why aren't you, aren't I irresistably cute?? wouldn't you love to pet me, huh, huh???" And because of him I stopped hating all cats, but still remained, you know, cautious...even though I was grown up I was still scared witless allergic. You might think being allergic was an arguement, but I'm also quite allergic to dogs, and we have two of those....I digress...

Jack came to Cee's mum in an unusual way...which is to say about two years ago in the springtime, his mother decided to give birth to him and his other 2 siblings under Cee's mum's back deck, which is covered and a nice little shelter from rain (and snow!) Imagine MIL's chagrin when she realized she had a bunch of cats living under her deck! She is not particularly a cat person either, but is an animal lover and decided that she must feed and water these new "family" members....things went on, as things tend to do, and pretty soon all of the cats were gone on to greener pastures...except for one lonely kitten, who must have really enjoyed the Friskies, or whatever it was she was leaving out for him/her. But by then you see it was starting to get colder outside, and MIL decided if Kitten (he wasn't called Jack yet back then) was going to be her cat, he/she must be an indoor cat, so she patiently took her time and got close to him, he let her pet him, and would come when she called, but he would never let her pick him up (you can't be too careful, you know).

Anyway, in good time she finally got him inside, and took him to the vets, where it was determined that he was, in fact, a he, and he was given the name of Jack. Jack was very skittish at first, and he was quite unhappy about not being allowed outside, because you know, that was all he knew. Finally, Cee's mum and Jack made a bargain; she told him he could go outside as long as he came in every night, and he agreed. And even though some people (okay, me) don't think it's a good idea for him to go out---what if he doesn't come back one day? you'll be sorry then, won't you?---Jack is much happier being let out, and he always comes back in at night.

In good time and after many visits, Jack let Cee touch him and pet him, and in many more visits and even more time, I got up enough nerve and pet Jack myself, and he let me!! He even rubbed up against me and purred! And this really weird thing happened...I fell in love...with a cat!...a cat that wasn't evil and didn't spring up out of nowhere trying to scratch at my face and eyes...a cat that didn't jump on my back and try to use my skin to sharpen it's satanic claws.....well, you get the picture. Even Cee loves the cat, and he's not a 'cat person' either....and now every time I come over I threathen to put Jack in my purse and take him home...but of course I never could, the killer shih-tzu and queen collie would be most put out, I just have to settle for the odd head scratch or tummy rub. I think Jack and I are kindred spirits, because he's still pretty skittish about people, and I will always be skittish about cats. He did, however, let me pick him up the other day, much to both our amazement...

"Uh...I don't recall giving you permission to post any pictures of me...."

make. it. stop.

Have you got any cheese? Because I'm going to whine about the weather--again....last time, promise...at least I hope!

It's been a winter of records, record snowfalls (we beat the one set sometime in the 1920's, you know, back in the days when they expected to be snowed in every year?) Record number days of snow (2 out of every 3 days there's been snow in the air....um great) And lastly record accumulation from a single storm...that storm being last Friday, Saturday and part of Sunday, when it did not stop snowing for about 46 hours straight...total accumulation was somewhere between 40 and 45 cm (15-17 inches), to go with the 28 cm (11'') we got the past Tuesday.

We knew it was going to be a bad one, when I opened up the door Saturday night and saw this:



I went "Hmmm...", because this is our back door/stoop, which is two steps up from the back patio, so about 2 1/2 feet up from the patio. Notice that when I opened the door I actually had to push snow back away from the door...also notice that you cannot see either steps or patio...notice also that the dog is wisely refusing to go out....later on Cee decided even though there was tons of snow still falling he should clear a bit of a path for the dogs to go out and, you know, do their thing, and when he opened the door the killer shih tzu took a run for the outside and jumped, and promptly got stuck, in the ever-growing pile of snow. Said killer mutt then started to panic a bit, because not only was the snow he was stuck in up to his ears, but his feet were not touching the ground, so all he could do was sort of hang there suspended in the snow until his fearless daddy Cee tromped out to rescue him.

On Sunday we, along with probably everybody else in the city and surrounding areas, bravely went out to dig our way through.

Here is my car, cleverly disguised as a huge pile of snow.

Here's a bit of what we faced...picture me (I know it's hard cause there's no pictures of me) up to my thighs in snow (I'm 5'2") trying to shovel down the front path so we can get our bills delivered (wait...maybe I shouldn't have done that? Crap!) We were out all day shovelling. The wonderful neighbour (bless his heart!) next door came and blew out the bottom of our driveway with his snowblower, cause the pile was up to my shoulders and would have taken us hours.

Friends, the weather men actually had the nerve to tell us all that it wasn't over either! We are getting more snow yet this winter (Spring starts next week officially)...we actually got another 3" this past Tuesday...we didn't even bother trying to shovel it, because there's no where to put it.

All of this snow has made alot of people crazy here...they are calling it "snow rage"...there was a story of a man in Quebec that saw the snow plow coming down his street, so he went and got his shotgun and when the guy came close to his driveway he actually pointed it at the guy and told him if he plowed any more snow into the bottom of his driveway he was going to kill him....while I'm sure we've all secretly thought about doing this (especially when they do it more than once in a week!), I can't imagine someone actually doing it...they are blaming the weather, but I think it's just people behaving badly...maybe it's the preservatives...or the reality tv...I'm up for suggestions.

Meantime you'd think I'd be finishing a ton of knitting or crocheting projects, since we were snowed in and all, but really all I wanted to do was lay in the fetal position in bed and drink hot chocolate in between whining and sucking my thumb.