March 15, 2008. Western Head. Nova Scotia. Storms.

The snow started falling at 5:00 am and has been snowing all day. The wind is blowing too. I am upstairs in our bedroom and from the windows you see a winter wonderland in all directions. And the roar of the wind comes through loud and clear. It is a perfect day to stay at home. This morning early I looked out toward the sea and I saw this figure through the dense snow walking across our lawn. Ken of course, out cheching to see if the weather was fit to go for a walk. The answer was that it was fine to go for a walk, as long as you kept your back to the wind. We stayed indoors all day, just like any good Washingtonian would. There is something about being required to stay at home that is appealing. For a day lots of tasks get completed but after a time, the enforced status would not be pleasant. But I have enjoyed it today. With the wind blowing so hard, the snow blows across the lawn not on the lawn. Not much snow accumulates by the shore. The forecast is for snow all evening and all night. Tomorrow we are having our friends for lunch. I bet you not one of them cancells.

My sister told me last week that they were snowbound with no electricity. Their home is on McCullough Lake, thirty miles south of Owen Sound, Ontario. The highways were closed so no option to get out, so they happily stayed at home, snug as bugs in rugs. They have a wood stove in the living room which heats the house if necessary, and the stove can be used for cooking too. So Carol spent the day cleaning her house, doing an early spring cleaning, while her husband Ken used the snow blower to clear the driveway. Ken is 82. These Canadians are tough!!

Once Ken and I and Andrew and David were sking in France. We were staying in an apartment right on the ski hill, in a lovely little town. The boys were in high school. We awoke one morning to discover two feet of snow had fallen over night. The snow continued to fall so hard you could not see the hill from our house. No skiing today. After several days of skiing all day we were ready for a break. Our refrigerator was full and we had plenty of books. We always travel with a book on games-Hoyles Rules I believe and of course a deck of cards. Neither Ken or I were brought up playing cards, sinful you know, so we had to learn from the books before we could teach the boys. But teach them we did. The boys and I played cards all day. We played lots of kinds of games. We kept playing all day and all night because I kept losing. Every different game we played I lost, time after time. At first we laughed about it but did not think much about it, but as the boys were used to seeing me win a lot of games they liked the idea that I was losing and just kept going. I tried everything. I played aggressively, I played the conservative style, but nothing worked for me. It was not an hour of card games. This was all day and all evening. And I was trying my best. We all agreed that we would keep going until I won a game, which I finally did, at 11pm. We still laugh about that string of bad luck of mine, and remember when we were snowbound in France. The lesson for the boys was that when you hit a strek of bad luck, quit playing. It was a good thing I was not a betting person playing with real money. I would have been stone broke.