Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow

(and how it's already almost gone)

I am an optimistic realist. Sometimes I call myself an optimistic pessimist. Which basically means I simultaneously hope for the best and plan for the worst. It means I look at my glass as half full but know that I'm still drinking which means it won't be half full forever. So I woke up this morning and was immediately transported to see that it had snowed between three am and seven thirty am (I know this because Max woke up around two thirty and couldn't get back to sleep and the last time I looked outside was three-oh-five am.) I LOVE SNOW. But it merely dusted McMinnville. There's not enough here to last through the weak winter rays more than another hour. I can hear scoffing in the midwest where people are routinely buried under six feet of the stuff.

For some reason, people always assume that if you say you like snow what you really mean is: "I like to have twelve feet of snow dumped on me and my house so I'm trapped for a week with whatever paltry food selection I have in my pantry. I like to shovel snow for six hours a day and get in accidents on the road on my way to work." What I really mean when I say I love snow is that I would like to have a few gorgeous snow storms a year that leave me with at least six inches of snow to play with so it doesn't melt under my warm loving stare before I even have time to eat a fist of it that isn't filled with twigs and dirt.

I interupt myself to say that at this minute it is snowing! It's so beautiful! I just tried to capture this elegant display on my camera and it didn't really show up. I want it to snow all day long. And then I want it to snow all night long too. Because the perfect amount of snow stays with you for a few days and the perfect amount of snow invites snowman building.

The natural retort to all this is "well why the hell don't you move to a place where it always snows a lot? Like Montana or Colorado." Believe me, I've heard this often enough. First of all, I'm a west coast gal. I truly am. The high mountains of the rockies, the plains of the interior, and the east are not for me. So I chose to move north of Ashland Oregon, where it generally snows satisfyingly a couple of times a year. I figured that I'd get even more snow if I moved six hours north. But apparently I have a talent for finding the little warm non-snowy pockets of valley where everyone is happy with more temporate weather than people just five miles north get. Sometimes hidden talents can be annoying.

I'm snow greedy. It's stopped snowing again and the sun is out. Damn. Oh well. At least the snow didn't melt before I woke up. At least I got a little snow. At least it's just the beginning of winter and there are two more months in which it could drop a load on me. At least I only live two hours away from Mt. Hood where there is a little snow on the peak all year long. See my half full glass? Right at this second, outside the office window, there is a spruce tree on which a chipper little bird is sitting, fluffed up against the cold. So obviously there are other things as gorgeous as snow out there. Time to get more coffee and do a different post to follow up on our trip south where there is NO SNOW right now.