I gathered up trash from around the house this morning and tied it up neatly into bags by the front door. It was cold today, a whopping 20 degrees in the sunshine. Even though the garbage cans are just around the corner from the front door I needed to dress up like the Abominable Snowman for my short jaunt. With parka, boots up to my knees, scarf, mittens and hat all donned, I bent down and gathered up the plastic bag tops into one hand and opened and shut the front door behind me with the other. I took three steps, or so, straight ahead, turned to my left and was about to take a step down which would lead me on a short path alongside the house to the trash cans when I froze.
There they were.
Some creatures foot prints in the deep snow. I think it must have been a rabbit, but I'm not sure. I'm no animal track master. I surprised myself that I was able to stop so quickly when my body was simply rolling with the motions and my mind had been off on who knows which cloud, well, I know, but I'm not telling!
I stood there for quite a few minutes and just admired those tracks. Some little Peter Cottontail was brave and bold and had ventured close to our door and left a cute calling card for me. The tracks brought a smile to my face and offered up happiness along with a moment for reflection upon the little blessings which are all around us and which are so very easy to miss.
Hugo's favorite thing to say at the moment is, "I'm good helper Mom". Today we dug our selves out from under the snow and ice. I had a shovel and Hugo had a shovel. He also carried an ice scraper about with him. He helped clear off the grill and front bumper of my car. The problem with his helping me is that he wants to switch up our tools all the time. He'll want which ever shovel I'm using and then five minutes later he'll want to switch again. He did get bored while I was digging around the car and climbed up a snow bank. Then he began to throw ice chunks my way and grunted and groaned attempting to topple over boulders of snow into our freshly plowed drive. We had a break to talk about this and afterward he spun around and set off to explore. An inch of ice capped the snow. Hugo walked all around on top of the high snow. It was a sight to see. He knew it was special and kept asking me to look at him. I wanted to take a picture but I had miles of snow and ice to move and a lunch date waiting. So I hacked and heaved and tried to figure out how to lift with my legs and not my back. Tricky. I was in an ice smackin' and snow throwin' zone when I realized Hugo wasn't where I thought he was... He was sliding down the island (land between the two driveways) as fast as could be with no need of a sled. We have no sled. I didn't buy one when I saw them for sale at Dick's and today when I looked they wanted $30! for a snow boogie board thing which you could customize with your own artwork. Sorry, we'll wait for next year's cheapo normal sleds. Anyway, there was Hugo down on the lower drive, he couldn't make it up the way he had come because it was slippery soooo smart boy of mine, walked up and around the house all on his own. He was glowing at his accomplishment when he arrived by my side. All smiles he was! I went back to my hacking, heaving and swiping while he slid down the island on his snow pants covered bottom over and over again.
