Snow. In Arkansas. In March. Almost as strange as not smoking!

So Friday it snowed.  A lot.  Big, fluffy, swirly flakes everywhere.  We aren't accustomed to this, and no one is ever prepared.  The schools, and my job, let out at noon.  I decided I would rather stay and get my paperwork done than to come in Monday and realize I had NONE done, especially since I knew Monday was ALSO daylight savings Monday, probably my LEAST favorite day of the year.  (I've been ROBBED - someone stole an hour AND my morning sunshine!!!)  Anyway, by 3:20, when I left, I was driving through the closest thing to a blizzard we've seen.  The snow was blinding!  The flakes were tiny but TONS of them!  I passed ONE car going my direction and one car going the other direction on a FOUR LANE highway!  When I turned onto my road, there were two sets of tire tracks in snow, thank goodness!  My driveway was covered, my yard was covered, and my feeder birds, which generally fly away when I pull up, flew right AT me!  They hung around in the trees tapping their little bird feet watching me fill the feeders.  They didn't even wait until I got in before covering them, the lil pigs!  By the way ONE bird count was:  16 cardinals in back, 5 in front, 6 blackbirds, 2 cowbirds, 4 goldfinches, 5 housefinches, 1 purple finch, 18 sparrows (various kinds), a chicadee, and a titmouse - all on my feeders at one given moment in time!  They don't know how to act in snow either.  I was kinda wrecked when I got home, my stomach was all messed up.  My dog was WILD!  I thought about staying home, relaxing, and watching it snow, but my gaming friends were not having it!  Mike called and claimed the snow had all melted out there, and it was not going to stick on the road.  At that time, it was still blizzard-like in my yard.  I called my niece to get a mid-way reading, and she said it was snowing at her house, too.  After about an hour, the snow stopped, I went by and picked up my niece, and headed to game night.  Mike had snow all over his yard (liar)!  Saturday came and UP I was at 5:00 AM, just ITCHING to get at them birds!  I'm exaggerating.  I did get up and hit the snooze.  The second time I hit it, I wondered when my friend Kelly was going to call.  The third time I called her and got voice mail.  This was the perfect excuse to go back to bed.  (She was supposed to call me...)  At 6:30, I got worried.  She has been known to leave without me.  I showered, layered on clothes, and headed to her house.  She wasn't dressed.  She wasn't going.  It had been CANCELLED!  Mind you, now, no more snow forecast.  It was still all over the ground but starting to melt.  She had left a message on my answering machine which has been dropped too many times and has a mind of its own.  So there I was, all dressed for a walk.   SOOOOOOOOOOO, I drove to my timberland (what a shock) and crunched around in snow for five hours in my pink and brown PLAID galoshes (they look WORSE than they sound).  I found an even better house site.  I kept turning around and around various places thinking, "How would THIS be as a front yard; how would THIS be to see off a back porch, etc.?"  FINALLY, for once in my life, I could actually SEE it.  My friend Mike has this gift of visualizing things before they happen.  He had an old house moved onto his property, gutted it, and completely re-did it, walls and all.  It's like a showcase now, but at the TIME, he would walk through and say things like, picture this wall gone, an archway here, a deck coming out here, etc., and I would be like, "Huh?"   Not only could I picture my porch, I could even see the driveway!  Yesterday, I went to the "little grand canyon" which is actually the spillway of a lake.  The water cut into the red clay, grey clay, and sand, and made these multi-colored steep canyons.  There are several trails in the woods you can walk.  I'm too scared of heights to get next to the rim on the top trail.  But I held on to a tree and looked over.  When my dog stared over, I FREAKED and ran to where the trail goes down and you come out on top of the lowest cliffs.  In summer I have jumped from here into the water.  It's still fairly high, but the water is deep.  Precious and her buddy Buster suddenly became big horn sheep and were bounding up and down the cliffs, making little clay avalanches.  The water was Caribbean blue, and so clear you could see every leaf at the bottom from the bottom trail.  We walked all over the place, Precious chasing Buster, Buster chasing Precious.  Precious finally figured out that Buster didn't like the water much, so she would run through it, and he would figure out a way around it.  At one point, she just plopped down in it.  This was a particularly slimy spot from algae, and I had to ride in the backseat beside "SWAMP DOG" all the way home.  Thank God for sun roofs!  Needless to say, she got a bath.  Today, there is no snow anywhere.  Supposed to get up in the 60's like yesterday.  Hope all you quitters out there are doing well.  I'm dangerously close to two months quit and feeling quite tickled, and freeeeee!