Snow

It snowed last night.  It would snow and then rain and then snow.  When I woke up this morning, snow was covering the driveway.

The snow was making my pine trees point down from the weight of the ice and snow. Birds were flying around and walking on the snow. They eat the red berries that are covering the Holly bushes. They stand at the bottom and jump to grab a berry and eat it. They look funny walking all over the blanket of white snow.

My hubby told my son that he would pay him to shovel the snow on our driveway. He was shoveling the snow and I went outside to help him. My son had a big snow shovel, it made it easy to scoop up the snow. I had a regular shovel, it takes forever to scoop up the snow with that thing. Every time I picked up a scoop and threw it to the side, it came out all rusty, from the shovel. The neighbors were outside building big snowmen. My son asked if he could shovel their driveway for $10. They said "Sure", so he left me and went to do their driveway. I got half the driveway done. It is a lot of hard work. The snow is heavy. I had never shoveled snow before, because I lived in Las Vegas for 30 years, it hardly ever snowed there. It does not snow that much in Knoxville either, but it did today, probably about 6 inches. My hubby came out and finished the other half of the driveway. I came in and was so cold. It was 27 degrees outside at that time. My muscles were sore for shoveling snow for a couple of hours too. It was good exercise.

It is now midnight and it is 19 degrees outside. The street is snowy and icy. The snow glistens and looks beautiful.
When ever a car goes by, the tires crackle on the snow and ice. Two quads go flying by, up and down the street. They are loud, they must have gone by 10 times.

TECHNO CHICKEN

I LOVE THIS.

Saturday Wordzzle Challenge week 96

From CONNIE PICTURE THAT

This week's words were: Badger, roll out the barrel, amazing, a lovely cup of tea, pressure, frozen, Gandalf, pixies, top gear
And for the mini: smelly, politician, favourite, token gesture, garden

I only did the 10 word challenge, although it is only 9 plus a long prase this time.
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Bucky Badger was the towns law here in the hollow.  He was an amazing person.  I remember the time the pixies were climbing all over the top gear of this contraption he invented.  It was full of gears, bells and whistles.  When he walked in and saw they were up to no good, he blew his magic whistle and they stopped, didn't move, looking like they were frozen to the thing.  He called to Gandalf, "Roll out the barrel over in that corner."  So Gandalf lumbered over to this old whiskey barrel and proceeded to roll it across the floor.  Bucky instructed Gandalf to pick up each pixie, being careful not to use any pressure when handling them, as they are fragile, and to put them in the barrel.
When Gandalf lumbered over to the pixies, they came to life and scattered as quick as you could blink an eye.  It was an amazing sight to see.
Sighing, Bucky sat down to drink a lovely cup of tea that was brought to him from Miss Petuna.  She made the best tea, a sweet sassafras tea.
"Roll that barrel back in the corner and get out" he shouted.  Gandalf jumped and did what he was told.  He was just mad that he couldn't catch those darned pixies. 
He left in a hurry that day.  He never could catch pixies.

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To make a wordzlle, use the words, and even do the mini if you want to.  Then go here to tell Raven.

Flash Fiction Friday 55

She stood on the bridge, looking down at the cold dark water.


The wind was howling, blowing around her hair, stinging her eyes as the tears blew away, down the side of her face.
“Just jump” she thought. Her knuckles wrapped around a post, not wanting to let go, but her mind saying “Just JUMP”!

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Now go do your 55 and then go tell G-Man, he likes to read them, so do I, tell me too.
PS:  His is really good this week.

Saturday Wordzzle Challenge #95 (but not 95 for me.)

This week's words were: alternate reality, shadows, frantic, tomatoes, field, lilies, DVD, snow mobile, aggravation, music

I am only doing the 10 word story using these words.

The 10 word.

Jenny had a fitful sleep.  Tossing and turning.  She was dreaming.  She was somehow in an alternate reality.  Shadows were green, which was a little disconcerting. She looked around and noticed she was standing in a field of lilies.  She looked down and saw tomatoes growing on some of the lilies.  She thought "How strange this place is."  She started walking when she heard music coming from a tree house, way up in a tree.  She went to the tree and tried to climb up to the tree house.  She would put her foot on a branch and the branch would disappear.  This caused her great aggravation.  She looked up and saw something dangling from a branch, on a long string, just spinning around in circles.  The string grew longer and longer until she could reach it.  Attached to the string was a DVD with a picture of a snow mobile on it.

The string started wrapping around her, binding down her arms and legs.  She was frantic to get loose. 

Just then she woke up and discovered she was all twisted in the sheets.

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To join in go here and sign up.

Saturday's Wordzzle Challenge week 94

This week's words were: space cadet, silver lining, wood, turtle soup, minaret, ice, grease, sales, mandala, mug .

I haven't does this Wordzzle for a while, but I decided to try it today. I am just doing the 10 words and making a little story with them.
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Kaylee was in the space program. She was now officially a Space Cadet.

She thought she looked like a dork in her cape that she wore. It was gold with a silver lining. The Program Director said the class had to wear them for the class photo.

Kaylee was looking at the pictures on the wall. One was a picture of an old tall building with the Director standing in front of it. Just then the Director walked over and told her about the time he visited that minaret in the picture. He was attending a sales convention right across the street from the minaret.

She semi listened to him. She then heard him tell everyone "I have a surprise in the lounge."

Everyone went in and sat down. There was a cook in a chef hat, standing by a big pot of something bubbling rapidly.

The chef had on an apron all spotted with grease. He was stirring the bubbling substance with a big wood spoon.

There was a beautiful cloth with a mandala print, draped over a table.

He placed a mug in the center and filled the mug with a soup.

He pointed at her. "Do you want a mug of my soup"? He handed it to her. It was hot so she asked for a piece ice to cool it down.

"Excuse me, but what kind of soup is this?"

She looked at it closely. It didn't look too appetizing.

"Try it, it is turtle soup!" he said. Standing there, clanging the pot loudly with the spoon in his hand.

"Turtle soup", she said in a high pitched voice. Her stomach started to get queasy. How was she going to eat this stuff.

She put it down, saying "I suddenly don't feel well".

The Director was giving her evil eyes.

"Um.....I am just not hungry", she said. She tried to ignore the hole he was burning in the back of her head as she was walking away.

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To join in on the wordzzle challenge go here.

Cold

It was 8 degrees F this morning. So Ccccoooold! I looked out the window and saw the neighbor's dog standing there on their porch. It legs were shivering a lot from the cold. My neighbor, who usually comes out of his house to get his news paper in just shorts, no shoes or shirt, actually was dressed in pants and a long sleeve shirt this morning, dashing out in the cold to collect the paper.
We went out today, to the store. We drove by the little lake and there was ice forming all over it.

There were a lot of Canadian geese all around it on the grass. I wonder why they are here, in the cold. Why not continue to Florida where it is nice and warm. Well warmer than here. It is supposed to snow 3 inches on Thursday. The weather always predicts snow, but then it changes and does not snow. I hope it does. I love to watch the snow come down out of the sky and coat the ground in the soft snow. It does not last long around here.
And to think, over a week ago, I was in warm, sunny Florida, sitting on the beach, watching the waves in the ocean.

New Years Eve on TV

I stayed home last night. I didn't want to go anywhere and stand outside in the drizzle rain. I turned on TV and watched it all in my living room.
We had bought Lobster tails at Sam's Club, so I made those. I put the butter in these little bowls and it has a candle under neath it to warm up and melt the butter. The butter go so warm, it was bubbling and popping all around the holder. It was so good to eat though. I made bake potatoes and I topped it with cheddar cheese. I was going to make some rolls from a recipe I saw on Foodwishes.com, but I didn't. I bought a loaf of bread from the store.
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Now I must say this. I watched Dick Clark. He needs to retire. When it came down to count down the time, he was all mixed up and counting the numbers wrong. ABC.......please take Dick Clark off the New Year's Eve show. He used to be great, when he was young looking, even though he was old. But now it is hard to watch him because he has a hard time talking. When he comes on, I switch the channel and then switch back, hoping he will be off camera.

Also Jennifer Lopez was on. She sang and danced but Jenny from the Block, with all the money you have, you could have wore an outfit that was flattering, but you picked out the most awful outfit.




Now the front is OK, but from the back, Jenny, it does not flatter you. Plus Ryan Seacrest said it was really sheer. Now if you are going for the naked look, I would not advise it. You can find something better than that outfit.

I do wish I had those huge ugly 2010 glasses, that blink and light up. I like those.

Happy New Year.

Watery Wednesday

We went for a drive last night and saw this Christmas Light display around a pond.
They had dolphin lights and ship lights. It was really pretty to look at.


To join in on Watery Wednesday go here.

Santa Train ride

On Saturday morning, my husband said "Are you guys ready?" "Ready for what?" I said.

"For the train ride."

Oh, yeah, the train ride. We booked that way back in the summer, because around Christmas, they are always sold out. It is this old train, 1925, that you ride on during the holidays. They have Santa. They said it was about a 2 hour ride. I thought it was going to go for a nice ride around town.

It was cold Saturday. The high was 35 degrees. You park about a block away. Walking to the train was so cold. We finally get to the train. There were a lot of people getting on. The first car you go into is one that has stuff for sale. They had bowls of Goldfish crackers, animal crackers, cookies and marshmallows. They give you a cup of hot chocolate. There were a couple of cars with seats for passengers. We went to the end car, the one by the engine.

This guy, dressed like a train conductor showed us to a seat. They look like regular seats, he grabbed the top and pushed it, so that the two seats faced each other. There is not much room for your legs when you sit across from the other seat. In fact my knees hit the opposite seat.

Basically there was no room for my legs.

The train finally started up. It started moving. A big cloud of smoke came out from under the engine. It goes really slow. We were going along the river and we went over a bridge over the river.

We didn't go very far. They then stopped the train and some guy read a book to the children. The train was cold. Especially in the gift shop car. The lady there said it gets colder as the train goes because there is no heat. They heat the passenger cars with a heater and then turn it off when the people get on. It got colder and colder. The winds would fog up from the cold, so if you wanted to see out, you had to wipe the window. When we got to the end of the track, the engine unhooked and turned around to hook onto the other end to go back. That took a while too. They could have read the book then, I don't know why they stopped to read the book. I guess they wanted to stretch out the time.

Here is the engine going by, see the engineer.

They finally had Santa walk in. He gave each child a felt Christmas ornament. My son got a felt snowman.
It was neat riding on a train, but it didn't go very far and it was so cold. I want to go on a real train ride somewhere.