The dogs chose not to go out last night. Once I pushed the door open they each looked and backed into the kitchen. They are not dumb animals. This morning they had no choice. They peed in tandem then Henry ran a bit and Nala did her zoomies. Both are now sleeping on the couch. They are exhausted.

We have so much snow I will be hibernating. The spring robin and I will emerge when the world is warmer and the gardens have green shoots. My car is backed into the driveway and has been blocked by a mountain of plowed snow. I swear I heard someone singing about the hills being alive, the plowed mountain is that big.

I have no shovel and no snow blower. I had a plow guy who borrowed my shovel a couple of years ago, the last time he plowed for me. He just never came back, never called. He still has my shovel.

My muse has left for sunnier climes. One of my students posted a comment that Bolga is hot, hot, hot (her words). She wants snow. I want hot. Too bad we can’t trade at least for a little while.

Because the snow has me housebound, I am left me yet again to my own devices. I could clean (oh, the horror), read or watch movies, but that is what I have been doing for the last few days. I need diversions. Maybe I’ll just join the dogs on the couch if they’ll let me.

I have not been baiting the mouse hotels for the last couple of days. I don’t want to catch any. I can’t relocate them with the snow covering everything, and I won’t dispatch them to their heavenly rewards. They get a couple of free days.

In January 1969, on a Sunday, I got a special delivery letter congratulating me on being selected for the Peace Corps. I would be going to Ghana. I had to look in an atlas to pinpoint where Ghana is in Africa. I knew nothing about it. The pages I found told me imports and exports, major crops, currency, topography, social hierarchy, climate and major cities. Ghana was reduced to a couple of geography classes. At staging, before we left, I saw slides of Ghana. I was still caught in the pages of a geography book. To complete the scene, I just needed a nun in front reminding us to pay attention and be quiet.

I have found an old black and white science fiction movie from 1951, Lost Continent. Right now they have just climbed an obviously fake mountain to the top looking for their wayward rocket. They lost one man on the climb. I guess I’ll keep a head count. At the top of the mountain is a strange world. Everything is green, even the dinosaurs.

The snow started around 9 with small flakes. They are still falling but more quickly. I procrastinated the last couple of days so I had to go out this morning. I dreaded it, but the dogs needed food as did Jack. They better be thankful. What surprised me was how few a number of cars I saw. At the store where I usually shop, the parking lot was pretty much empty. Four registers were open but idle. I sailed through. I did reward myself with a scone and a Snickers. The dogs got their biscuits. They always do from this store. They circle me like vultures while I’m carrying the bags. They look like baby birds in the nest waiting to be fed. Their mouths are open anticipating their treats, their biscuits. It is not a pretty sight. The scone is gone.

I can’t remember when I was last delighted by so much anticipated snow. When I was a kid, to me, snow was about the best weather of all weathers. I loved that from the front picture window in the living room I could see my part of the street and parts of two other streets. The street light was on the corners of two streets. It lit the road and the sidewalk. The light was best in rain or snow. I remember watching heavy rain slanted sideways by the wind passing through the light. The snow sometimes glinted under the light. The heavy snow made everything look shadowed. That snow usually came sideways. The bigger flakes, not the biggest flakes, fell the longest and the most. The street light cover would get lost in the snow, even its heat was not strong enough to ward off the cold. When I went to bed, the snow was falling so thickly you couldn’t see too much. Some mornings it was still snowing. Some windows were covered in icy snow so you couldn’t see out. We used to open the storm door, pushing it through the snow, so we could an idea of how much snow fell. We waited for no school. We drove my mother crazy begging to go outside. By afternoon she was done in and we went outside and froze.

My father used a metal shovel to clear the snow from the steps down the sidewalk to the street. It was the same shovel he used to dig holes or move dirt. It wasn’t very big. My father always took a while, but he cleared the paths and the steps down so deeply you could see what had been under the snow. The rest was up to the plows. He had done his duty.

I’ll leave my backdoor light on tonight. I can keep an eye on the storm. The dogs too like to check out the snow from inside the house. It will be a quiet, cozy night.