Let it Snow!!!!!!!!

Finally!
It snowed last night! Snowed and snowed and snowed and snowed! Prediction was 2-6 inches, depending on which weather report I was reading. Looks like we got four or five. It's still coming down sporadically, but I've got my steps, driveway and sidewalk shoveled off now. That was fun. And easier than usual. Two reasons for that: (1) I often wait to shovel until it's a foot deep; (2) this is lighter, fluffier snow than we usually get. Yay! Now it actually LOOKS like Christmas/Solstice/Cepholopodmas-time.

Also, I found out from an older neighbor who tends to shovel off people's walks for them (HA! I beat him to mine this time!) that my southern neighbor was, in fact, arrested. For drug dealing. This would explain why there always seemed to be too many cars in his driveway. He may get 20 years. If they were still having problems, this could be a relief to his wife. If they weren't, she's probably not having a very good Christmas.

However, his cat is lonely and hungry. So after shoveling things off, I stayed outside and played with Merlin for a while. His "real" name is Sam, but the summer I first wound up taking care of him, I didn't remember that. So I call him Merlin. Gorgeous, long-haired orange tabby. That summer, the neighbor and his wife were both in a near-fatal car-wreck. He lost a leg, and nearly lost the other one. She had some sort of major head trauma. I found this out maybe three weeks after it had happened. The cat had seemed lonely, and very thin, so I started feeding him. When they were gone for a week, I figured maybe they'd gone on vacation and the cat had gotten out of the house. Two weeks? Okay, extra-long vacation. At three weeks, I knew something was wrong, or that the cat had been abandoned, and found out from the same older neighbor what had happened. So Merlin's used to me. Sweet, friendly cat. Who doesn't seem to enjoy the snow as much as I do.