New Year's day

I spent the first forty minutes of 2010 with my cats in their room. They had never seen fireworks and were a bit scared of the noise, especially the younger female. She hid in the dark underneath a bed between the bed and the wall and I could only see the pupils of her eyes shining green from there. Her two brothers were a bit braver but the mother seemed worried as well. She left her spot on the styrofoam box by the window and only returned there when I entered the room and began talking to them softly and reassuringly. I was so glad to see she felt safer at the sound of my voice! I stayed and talked to them until all the firework noise ceased. At the return of silence the young female almost immediately emerged from her hiding, and we all returned to our normal activities of that time of the night, that is, we soon went to sleep.

Upon waking up this morning I saw about three inches of snow on the ground and it was still snowing. I think I must have shoveled for about three hours. But I got everything done - the sidewalks on both sides of the property, the driveway and the path to the house. While it's not snowing anymore and it even looks like the snow is thawing, we have frost forecasted for the rest of the week, going down to as low as -16 C. It's certainly better to have those heaps of snow out of the way before they freeze.