Grateful...

...is what I am! That I don't live anywhere in the path of the enormous winter storm that's going on right now. That we have power, and heat, and lots of food in the house. There's lots of folks out there right now who don't! Stay warm and safe, please.

It's cold and very windy here, but a clear beautiful day otherwise. It's very deceiving, you don't even realize how cold it is until you actually go outside...my Mom used to call this kind of wind "lazy wind", that is, it's too lazy to go around you and instead just goes straight through you! We're very fortunate to live in a place with a fairly moderate climate...but there are always exceptions, LOL. We've had the occasional snow and/or ice storm that brings the city to a complete standstill. And it doesn't take very much for that to happen,LOL! We're really not prepared for weather extremes, and the people here (unless they're from someplace where it DOES snow) don't know how to drive in any kind of snow or ice conditions. I certainly don't! The winter of 2008 was one of those exceptions...we had a week of snow and blizzard conditions that turned the streets into skating rinks, and caused school and business closures for several days.
This was our front porch Christmas week 2008:

And the back deck:

It may not seem like much to other folks, but we just aren't prepared for this kind of thing in the metro area, LOL! Just a few miles north, on the slopes of Mt. Hood, they are...but it happens there every year. Down on the "valley floor", not so much.

So to all of you dealing with wind, snow, ice, power outages and suchlike...you have my best wishes and good thoughts today. Hang in there...tomorrow (2/2) is Imbolc, we're halfway through Winter and on the way to Spring!