I hate that I now hate snow - but I now hate snow.  Too despondent to explain more than that.  Nobody is dead or even injured - but until you have fought your way to a barn more than five miles from you home in order to take care of 17 horses who are continuously in need of buckets of water because their water buckets freeze up within an hour or two of being filled - horses who are on edge because the wind is continually banging the barn doors against the aluminum siding of the barn - horses who may at any time colic because they are on edge and don't have enough water... until you have done it three times and know that you will have to do it at least two more times - you would not understand the despondency. But take my word for it - it ain't fit for man nor beast out there and it ain't no fun.

But I'd walk all the way there and back in this weather if I had to in order to be sure they had that water....

Fortunately the first two trips a friend was willing to brave the roads and this last trip the hub was willing.  Of course, we thought the roads would be better than they were.  Second trip yesterday things had improved over the morning.  Unfortunately between drop in temp and drifting snow things were much worse this morning - now we get to add lots of ice to the mix.  Got rather exciting a time or two.  I hate it when people leave their cars sitting across the road when there are two inches of ice and drifting snow over that on said roads...

 And for any of you who live up north and think it is no big deal - believe me when I say it is different here.  We don't regularly get enough "weather" to make it economically feasible  to have enough of the right equipment  to totally clear the roads - they do the interstates and the major roads pretty well, but we live several miles from a "major road" and there are no major roads between here and the barn.  We have curves (hard curves), grades, curves going into and coming out of and in the middle of grades      - sometimes curves on grades that empty into a T so that you must curve one direction going downhill into an intersection where you must then turn the other direction.  All that without benefit of  snow plow - salt, sand or cinders.  All the while you have to worry about the people who think they can handle the conditions but can't.  The people who think because they have four wheel drive they can drive as though the sun were shining and the pavement dry.  Roads here in the ice and snow are not what you Yanks think they are.

OK, I'm going to go start cleaning the Christmas mess and make some potato soup before I have to get out there and do it all over again...  Fiona is whining at the back door because she REALLY wants to go play snow frisbee.  Any of you wanna take her out?  It is too cold and windy for me.  (PS  - 21 degrees - 15 mph winds with 23 mph gusts - wind chill 8)

Oh, yeah, and I hate idiots driving Lexuses ( Lexuss -Lexus' -Lexusi?) on ice and snow while talking on their cell phones... jus' sayin'