Enough Already

I never thought I'd say this, but...Yo, Weather Gods! You can stop now!

I love winter. And snow. But really; this is getting ridiculous.

The snow just keeps coming. Daily. A good three-plus feet in the yard when these photos were taken a few days ago. The girls now have the snowy version of cabin fever - too small an area to maneuver in the yard because the snow is just too deep. They either snooze in the 3 ft x 4 ft area they've tramped down, or hang out with me in the house. Even when they're outside, the primary enjoyment of being in the yard - being able to watch the neighborhood, view the vehicles going by, see which neighbor dog is barking and at what, perhaps glimpse a deer cutting across the landscape - is obliterated by the piled up snow surrounding them. They can see out only if they're standing.

I actually went into the yard with the snow shovel two days ago and threw about two feet of fresh snow out of some of their old "stunnels" (snow tunnels) so that they could at least have the dignity of doing their business a few feet away from their snoozing area.

It has come to this.

For them to get any exercise, I must take them out onto plowed roads, either here in our neighborhood, or elsewhere. For some reason, the snowmobile area grooming guy hasn't been through in over a week, so we can't even go play on the forest road. (The bottom photo was taken shortly after the last time the forest road was groomed. We hiked rather than ran, because Meadow was still recovering from tweaking her knee, thus the leash in the photo.)

Day after day it's monochrome grey. Reminds me of winters in Seattle.

The girls are handling it much better than I am. Another lesson learned from the masters: don't stress over what you can't control or change. Go with it.