I can EAR you...

Beans has the largest ears in our cat family, and she also has the most acute hearing, being able to hear a fly before we even know there is one.  Unfortunately, her pursuit of said fly involves leaps and bounds through a room, toppling everything in the line of travel.  She also has a phenomenal jumping ability and a penchant for the highest places in the house.  This makes it really difficult to find a place for something like a vase of flowers, a particular favorite.  Still, I wouldn't trade her for anything.

The weather here is snowy once again, and I am glad that DD canceled her planned trip from here today to Philadelphia, and back on Sunday; the weather forecast is for freezing rain all the way on Sunday.  And today hasn't been too travel-friendly either.  I think spring would be a better idea, but what do I know?  I'm just the mother.

We actually had the state come through with a plow earlier this week, exposing all the potholes.  I think they did it at the request of the trash pickup people, who slid in a ditch when they were here last week.  Still they were due on Tuesday and we haven't seen them yet.  The pickup last week was the first in 3 weeks.  That's a lot of trash.

The horses have been barn kept for 3 weeks now, the footing outside is just too bad, either very slick with mud from the rain, or packed snow slippery the other days.  I know they will buck and kick and run around when they are first turned out, and so the footing has to be good to prevent bad falls.  And at their age, any fall is a bad fall. Even the dogs have mostly been in the barn too, for much the same reason.  When they are outdoors the barn doors are left ajar, but raining, snowing, or any combination of weather they still won't go in the barn.  They curl up and sleep next to the fence where they can keep an eye on the neighborhood.  They will end up looking like a dog-shaped snow drifts, and still won't go in the barn.  I should say, they are Newfoundlands, so cold really doesn't faze them, provided they don't get wet.  They have an incredible double coat and a lot of oily hair, but they really don't do well when soaked to the skin.

I am starting new knitting projects, matching mittens, scarf and hat.  The mittens will be the most complicated, covered in a tuck stitch and with ribbing at the wrist.  If I have enough yarn of that color, I should say.  I really don't know what is the right amount of yardage to be needed, only that a small skein is not enough and a one pound skein is more than enough.  Still, it is a learning experience for me.  I just have a feeling that all my projects will be learning ones, the sum total of my experience being very small.

I have cookies in the oven, and the timer will go shortly, so I will leave you with a thought:  "Don't you wish some people would start using GLUE instead of lipstick?"