Loving My Neighbor

The weather report sounds like a verb-tense conjugation:

It was snowing.
It is snowing.
It will be snowing.
It will never stop snowing.

Well, that last one isn't quite true. It's supposed to stop overnight tonight, and not start again until Thursday. Woo-hoo.

I was waiting to go out and start shoveling today, expecting the condo plow guy to show up, but around 4 I decided to go get a start even though he hasn't come. There was plenty to work on, as you can see.

I lucked out, though, since as I got started, my neighbor with the snowblower came over and offered to try to clear the path between my car and the snowbank. Nice! I don't even know his name, though we've talked about the Bruins now and again over the years (he has a Bruins plate on his car, too), and I've nodded to his wife and the kids, too. He was able to make a decent path, with much less effort than it would have taken me, so I could get some more digging done before the aches became too loud to ignore. See?

He was smoking a cigar as he worked, the smell of which took me right back to my grandfather, and it's 30 years since he died. Amazing how scents tie into memories, isn't it? I offered to make him brownies, but he just laughed it off.

You can see that the road is barely plowed. It's a small side street, and clearly we aren't high enough up on the list for much attention. Frankly, we still hadn't seen enough plowing from the previous storms; there are spots that aren't two cars wide, which makes driving more challenging than I enjoy. The snow levels are ridiculous. Here's the building across the street, wearing its icicles proudly. Or resignedly.

Not quite as long as the window, but close. And this one on the wire looks like a sneeze, frozen in time.

 You can hardly see the fence anymore, except where it's been shoveled.

But the other way, the picket fence is barely more than a memory. See the tops of the posts? There's a fence between them, really.

But this is all too depressing. Let's talk knitting. I've made some progress on the blanket, and have nearly finished the second ball. Today I spread it out onto another needle and paid it on the bed, so I could really see its size.

And the answer is, it's big! Which is good, because that's what I wanted. A blanket for a couple should be big enough for two people.

The pattern is still just starting to show, but I like it.

So on we go. Hopefully. Which I sure need, these days.