Snow!

look reeeeeeeeeeally hard at the roof next door

The Christmas tree went up last Friday. Ter and I worked all day on it—and, to be fair, on the rest of the house, too—and look what happened overnight! Snow!

Our neighbours are night owls. It’s not unusual for their lights to be on through the wee hours, and on Saturday morning at 3:30, I woke up to a glowier-than-normal glow from beyond the curtain. I can usually disregard it, but I’ve been dealing with a hormonal imbalance of late that’s made nighttime less restful than I prefer, so getting back to sleep was a losing battle. Finally I flopped onto my back and glared at the ceiling. Realizing that I could see the ceiling, I thought, Oh, good grief, don’t tell me that they have the bedroom light on next door. Grumble grumble grumble … well, might as well get up and trek to the loo since that’ll become an issue in another hour …

I got up, trudged into the hall, and paused in the doorway to the living room. The window is bare in that room; one day we’ll get around to hanging a curtain but for now we like the light, and during nocturnal traipses you can get an idea of what’s happening weatherwise with a glance. I detoured to investigate if the neighbours really were aiming to vex with an upstairs light and to my amazement, their windows were dark. The glow was actually coming from the thin layer of snow lying on their roof.

Snow! In November! On the first night after we put up the tree!

I forgot about the loo and hoofed it down to the Ocean Room, where a silent blanket of white was forming outside, on the cars, the lawn, the trees, the houses … and in the light of the corner streetlamp, tiny flakes danced and whirled in the playful wind. I was so excited that I almost woke Ter. The luxury of snow on a weekend was surely worth sharing, until I remembered her hair appointment at 11:45. That meant the snow had better be gone before then and if it wasn’t … Okay, I spared her a heart attack and preserved my joy, and true to the nature of a west coast snowfall, it was mostly gone by daylight.

But the little dusting was delicious.