Digging out

Ever since I was a child, Mum has held steadfast to the March lion and lamb adage and, being Irish and thus partial or victim to this sort of thing, I'm very glad the month was given birth during the throes of a huge snow storm. She will not allow a dove to land on the roof of her house--that means a death in the family--which terrified my siblings and I as children when two landed one balmy summer evening, and she also makes many signs of the cross if she sees one magpie as opposed to two and then cranes her neck searching to find another.

Anyway, if the saying about March is true--and we have to wait 31 days to find out--we shall have a gentle spring and warm summer. Of course, I realize this may apply only to the British Isles because I have found Pennsylvania summers with their intolerable humidity as horrid as the winter, neither of which I am partial to no matter where I live.

I have just come in from shoveling the back deck to allow Spice, our dog, to go out and attend to business. Thinking I would be clever, I shoveled twice yesterday, once after the evening news on the telly and then before I retired for the night, but I might as well not have bothered. We got about eleven inches in all. As I shoveled and rested, Spice watched with supreme doggie condescension from the door. Each time our eyes met, he seemed to rebuke my efforts in the equivalent way that we humans rebuke someone when we need a job done chop-chop and it's happening too slow. Of course, after I'd finished, off he trotted past me as fast as a dog with arthritis can go with his head in the air as if there had never been any obstruction in the first place.

Now for some well-deserved coffee and then I'll tackle digging out the car. In a perverse way I'm enjoying the whole thing, and the exercise is great, of course.

[technorati: dogs, blizzard, superstitions, mothers]