Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Yesterday I was able to share some good news with some of you on the kitty saga. Smitty and Maggie spent most of the afternoon in the same room. Smitty was, surprisingly, a perfect gentleman. We were effusive with our "Good Boy!" praise of his uncharacteristically polite behavior. Maggie prefers the safety under the bottom shelf in the pantry.

The tails tell the tale.

Not really, but I am especially fond of cat tails.

At dinner time, Mike popped the ring tab on a can of cat food and Maggie came running. Obviously, she knows that sound. As I've said before, she's quite a chow hound for such a petite kitty. She sat right here and ate her food. Just outside the frame is Mr. Smitty. He too had a plate of cat food, but he didn't eat much, preferring just to watch her eat.

They had a pretty good day together until just before we headed upstairs to bed. Maggie decided to run from Smitty and Smitty had to chase her. That, of course, was followed by a lot of four-letter words like "yowl" and "hiss" and "spit" and "grrr". Oy. When we opened the door to Maggie's territory this morning, the same thing happened. Okay, taking a step back again, but we're still working on it. 

Also yesterday, I ventured out to fill the bird feeders. It was snowing off and on, and quite cold at 22°F. I know some of you will sniff at that temperature, but it felt pretty darned cold to me. First, I wanted to check out the ice stalagmite. Mike thought he'd fixed this leaky faucet last year. Apparently not.

Also, we are such good parents that we provide them with a bird bath in the summer and a little birdy skating rink in winter. It's a good place to live for both cat and fowl.

When I headed over to the feeders, I noticed this coating of frost. This kind of spiky stuff is called hoar frost. I learned that during last year's cold weather, and so of course, I have to show off.

Here's some more on the garden fence.

It's harder to see on the trees, but they were so pretty with their coating of confectioner's sugar.

Fast forward to today, and we have around an inch of ice on the ground. Don't eat yellow ice...unless you happen to be a bird, and the ice turns out to be cracked corn.

Poor things. Their other food sources are harder to come by, and so you can see that they've kept the ice from forming here with their warm little birdie bodies.

Last winter, I was housebound for about a week when we had an ice storm like this. During that storm, we invested in some nifty Yaktrax. Think of car chains for your car, and then apply them to your shoes, and you have a pair of Yaktrax. They worked great. I stomped my feet just slightly to make sure I had good traction with each step, and I was able to get around without slipping. Of course, it was worth life and limb to get out and take some pictures of the landscape.

Which of these members of the Stanbro family would you imagine has the most horse sense?

This next image is a picture of the cracks in the ice where my foot fall landed.

Here's the view from the top of our driveway.

And these are little birdie tracks. It was kind of funny watching them today. I don't believe Yaktrax come in bird foot sizes, and so they were slipping around in the ice a little bit. Maggie watched them from Mike's office window and chattered away. She's an all around cat, for sure.

Before venturing out, I made some progress on the little handmaiden stitchery. This one should be finished in another couple of days.

Mike is home from work today, as is most of the Portland area workforce. Snow is one thing...ice is quite another. If you can't walk on it, you certainly shouldn't be driving on it. And, as usual, I'm home too. I have the middle vertical row of blocks quilted for the Quilting Snowladies. I'm only working with metallic thread at this point, and so I'll still have to go back and do some more work on them with the cotton thread. Today I'm hoping to get four more blocks done. It went a little faster yesterday now that I've practiced using the ruler template. I'm getting the hang of holding it and stitching now. Practice really does make perfect.

The internet is moving impossibly slow this morning. I imagine a lot of folks are working from home today. Hopefully, I can get this uploaded and published. If not, you'll know why you didn't hear from me today. Or maybe you won't.