Two months until Spring

When I first moved to Chicago I had a thin coat purchased from JcPenny on my Mom's credit.

I told Courtney that I knew what cold was and that my non-insulated coat would be able to outheat a Northern Illinois winter.

We lived downtown at the time and the first sub-30 wind chill ripped a layer of skin from my face when I would come around the corner of every high-rise.

We had a friend that cross-country skiied to our apartment. (Well she had to walk across the streets and it probably would have taken her less time to walk.) The wind off the lake was amazing and terrifying because of how cold it was


The coat lasted until the weekend and became known as the Fall jacket because I took it off one day after work and it could literally stand on its own it was so stiff.






Friday night we were supposed to get 2-5 inches of snow; which is typical for the time of the year. We ended up with 13. My father-in-law has a T-square in the backyard to track these things.

It is that thick water-logged snow that breaks your back when you try to shovel it. My neighbor from down the street was driving home and stopped and laughed at me for not owning a snowthrower. Part of me sincerely enjoys the exercise. A snowthrower feels like you are cheating nature no matter what my back says later in the evening.

I shoveled the back patio off for the dogs and to make a path to the grill for Sunday dinner. The dogs love the snow and haul ass for 10-minute intervals and then sleep for hours- content.




















A guy up the street must have gotten a new snowblower becasuse he generously did almost the entire sidewalk on our side of the street. I was shovelling the driveway and secretly wished he would take a righ-turn and help me out but he didn't so I resigned myself to the exercise.

















The night before we had been at a friends' house throughout the snowstorm and we drove home to find that the plow had built a wall on the street at the entrance of the driveway. It took two trys, but we were able to burst through the wall of snow and beach the car about five feet past the sidewalk.




We have actually had more than 30+ days of above-normal tempatures and the wind has been pretty dormant, but I am ready for Spring.



As you can see, Courtney is much better with the camera than the shovel but at least she kept me company.



Two more months until Spring and it was over 60 degrees in St. Louis last weekend.