Snow Peace

looking over at my neighbor's horse corral

     Each year, it is after approximately this many snowfalls that we Long Islanders usually get sick of winter.  I don't know exactly how many snowfalls this is, but I know that the number has arrived, since Facebook is blowing up with comments about how "winter sucks" and "bring on summer." Me, I take a little longer to hate winter, especially when I'm home for the day (school is closed!), the snow is perfect packing snow (great for building) and I don't have anywhere I really need to be.   

     Lately, I've been staying in on snow days, using the time to catch up on laundry or cooking, only going out to take a turn with the shovel on the driveway that would be like an Olympic ski slope if we didn't clean it perfectly. Today was warm for a snow day, though - or is it just that I've grown used to days with temperatures in the teens, so the thirties seems warm?  I decided to go out and wander around just for the fun of it.  

     My dog, Zoey (I like her name with a y), was terribly excited to go out - she loves snow - and she charged over to the neighbor's horse corral to see if her horse friend was outside.  No such luck.  Zoey is two years old - in spite of technically being an adult dog, she's really just a dog-child.  I think she may stay a dog-child for quite some time.  She used her unique antelope-style "I'm SO excited!!!" jumps to spring through the yard into the woods behind the house.  She charged down one of the trails...

     ...and I followed her for a while and then she played a short game of "catch the snowball in your mouth until your mouth gets cold and you have to take a break."  We returned to the yard where I took a picture of my favorite tree...

which looks just beautiful covered in snow.

I made a snow head.  Not a snowman, a snowhead...

     I worked on my snowhead for a few hours, alone with my thoughts and the still falling snow.  I remembered a snowman I made while I was in college, a tall, tall one that somehow came out looking like the statue on cover of the book I was reading for one of my classes.  I thought about a snowman I made with a preschool class I worked in long ago.  We had made the first snowball so big, when we got to the second one, I couldn't lift it up on top.  I asked a guy inside the building to help me assemble our snowman.  Then, years later, I married that guy.  Just a few years ago, I made a snowman with my daughter and our neighbor, who is like another daughter, and I made them both laugh by adding butt cheeks to that snowman.  

      My son opened the back door and shouted, "Mom, what are you making?  Is that an Easter Island Head?"  Hummmm, I guess it is. Sort of. 

Now he's out there making his own snowman. And the snow is still falling.

Soon, I too will be sick of snow and longing for spring.  Just not quite yet.