It’s snowing outside, and it snowed yesterday too. I shoveled at least four inches of snow off the driveway this morning, and we’re expecting anywhere from another 2-5 inches overnight. When I lived in upstate New York, I would have scoffed at such paltry totals (every winter I shoveled more than 100 inches of snow off my 300-foot-long driveway), but for Portland, this is a pretty good snowstorm, and I’m enjoying it.
The dogs, however, are bouncing off the walls because we didn’t go for our regular walks yesterday (25 mph winds and 21-degree temps put the wind chills in single digits). I feel for them. I didn’t go to the gym yesterday, and now that it’s snowing again, I don’t think I’ll be going today, either. Nobody in my neighborhood seems to understand you’re supposed to shovel your own sidewalk every morning, so mine is the only one that’s clear. Walking on the sidewalks (or even in the unplowed streets) builds up ice balls between the dog’s toes in just a few minutes, so even though they both LOVE the snow, our walks aren’t much more than down to the end of the street and back.
But one of the best parts of winter (to my view) is that it’s great writing weather. I more than met my writing goal for the month of January, completing 34K ‘new’ words (including five new short stories and 11% of my upcoming novel).
Let it snow.
