“Snow is not a wolf in sheep’s clothing – it is a tiger in lamb’s clothing.”

Sleigh bells ring, are you listening? In the lane, on the grass and on the deck, the snow is glistening. It started snowing around 10 last night, and we probably have about 5 inches of spring snow which sounds like an oxymoron to me. A dusting is spring snow. 5 inches is winter. The snow is heavy. I swept the walk to get my papers, and when I got to the street, I found slush under the snow. I left wet footprints. The branches of the pine trees are covered with a layer of the heavy snow and the bushes in the front are leaning from the weight. If I were a kid, I’d love this snow. It’s prime snowman snow: thick and heavy and sticky.

The Christmas cactus in here has a flower. I think of it as a gift as the plant was once my mother’s. It sat at the end of her kitchen table near the window. The table was in a niche in front of a bank of windows but one end of the table, flush with a window, had a cabinet beside it so we couldn’t sit on that side. The plants sat there instead. I remember when all of the cactus on the table were in bloom. The flowers were beautiful. Now I have one.

Today is just one of those days. I finished my monkey poop coffee, my back has soured my mood, and I am so tired of gray clouds. The sun was out for maybe a half hour yesterday, another taunt from Mother Nature. I can’t imagine what we did to anger her but it must have been a doozy.

I had two lady of the manor moments today. Skip, my factotum, came and plowed my driveway then shoveled in front of my car and mailbox. He brought in the bird seed and case of dog food I had left in the trunk because I couldn’t lift them. While Skip was here, Peapod delivered my groceries; he even put them on the kitchen counter. Now I’m wondering where my upstairs and downstairs maids are.

I am supposed to get an x-ray, but it won’t be today. I’m going to be a sloth again, and I’m using my back as an excuse, not that I really need one.

“I want to write a book about shoes that’s full of footnotes.”

This morning is winter. When I left for breakfast at 9 o’clock, it was 27˚. I saw people wearing winter coats, hats and gloves while walking their dogs, also sporting coats. While I was eating, the temperature rose to 32˚, but that cold didn’t stop me from being hopeful. I still believe that spring is taking hold. The front garden is filled with blooming crocus, and the birds are singing and greeting the morning. The sound is joyful.

The other day I bought a small pot of pansies for the kitchen. The flowers are yellow, my favorite color this time of year, the color of the sun. The daffodils I bought have finally bloomed and they too are a bright yellow. The sun is shining today, and the sky is blue. I am content despite the cold.

Today I have a few errands so I’ll go out in the afternoon. I’m sure Gracie will be glad for the ride. I try to take her all the time now because when summer comes, Gracie stays home except when we go to the dump where I can keep the car and the air conditioning running between stops. The heat is otherwise too much for Miss Gracie.

When I was a kid, I had three pairs of shoes: well, two pairs of shoes and a pair of sneakers. One pair of shoes was for school every day and church on Sunday. The other pair was for playing. That pair started out as school shoes then got worn and eventually demoted to play shoes. I wore those mostly in the winter or on cold days. In the summer I always wore sneakers. Nobody wore sandals back then except little kids. My sisters had white sandals with straps. My sneakers were red or blue when I was little. When I was older, they were white. We all wore white sneakers, mostly Keds, which narrowed at the toes. We kept them as white as possible. Sometimes we even used white shoe polish to cover marks. That had its disadvantages as the polish would seep to our socks and through to our feet, but that didn’t matter. White sneakers were a point of pride.

For my eighth grade trip, my mother bought me new clothes: a pair of sneakers, a blouse and clam diggers. I don’t know if that was a purely regional name. They were also called pedal pushers, and they looked a lot like Capri pants, the Mary Tyler Moore type, but to us they were clam diggers. It was the perfect name. Not many clothes boast a name which fits their function. If you wore those pants while clamming, they’d stay dry and out of the mud. We never did, but we could have.

“Come, gentle Spring! Ethereal Mildness! Come.”

Today I woke up nearer afternoon than morning. It had been a late night. I watched the Oscars at my friends’ house then came home, checked e-mail and watched a little TV. Before I realized it, the time had slipped away and it was after 3.

Yesterday it poured all day, but last night, as I was going home, the rain had turned to heavy snow and it was slushy and slippery, but right now the day is lovely with blue skies, lots of sun and a bit of warmth. I have feeders to fill, dog food to buy and laundry to do. That’s my agenda for the day. I hope I can manage.

I can see the white flowers of the drooping snowdrops in my garden. They don’t mind snow or cold. They are spring’s first miracle. Other green shoots are just appearing through the soil, but in one part of the front garden, the dafs have grown high. Perhaps yellow buds will be next.

Winter is beginning to weight me down. I am tired of cold and snow. I don’t remember ever before being so anxious for spring. Usually I just hibernate with good books, and I’m fine with that and patient with the weather. Maybe all the rain we’ve had, those days without heat or the heavy snowstorms have pushed me to ache for spring. I want one day when the deck is the perfect spot to be.

I don’t like vacations centered on the beach, even when I’m sick of winter. I want to see things, to eat new food and to hear a language not my own. I like old places, even ancient places. The fun of a new city is wandering and getting lost and finding wonders on the way. Sometimes I take all rights or all lefts. I like to sit in the sun at a table at a sidewalk cafe and drink coffee and watch the world go by. When I shop, I look for the unusual. I take a lot of pictures. I am partial to doors and windows. I always think of the generations of people who looked through those same windows and I wonder what they saw. I walk so much I am exhausted and always fall asleep early.

Today I’ll have no adventures, but I do have some sun and some warmth. I guess that will have to do.

“It ain’t the heat; it’s the humility.”

Mother Nature is running amok. It is far too hot for July. The Cape will reach 88˚ while Boston may break the record and reach 100˚. It’s a bit like winter, not from the temperature but from the amount of time I spend inside the house. I am so comfortable here that I dread going out into the heat. Tomorrow, happily, should be the last of this weather, and cooler days will follow and maybe even some rain: thunder showers would be nice.

I don’t remember when heat became an issue for me. When I was a kid, every day seemed the same, a day for playing outside regardless of the temperature though I could definitely tell which days were hotter because I got grubbier: the dirt and the sweat tended to mingle. When I was a teenager, I never went out much during the day. That was when the nights were more appealing. That was when my friends got their licenses, and that was when we’d drive around at night with no destinations in mind. We’d chip in our quarters to get a buck’s worth of gas to get us through the evening. Sometimes we’d stop at Carroll’s Hamburgers where all the parking spots were filled, and teenagers milled around or sat on the hoods of their cars. Other times we just slowly drove through the lot to check out the action. Some nights, after we’d had drill team practice, we’d stop at the diner to have desserts. We’d usually walk from the field uptown to O’Grady’s then we’d walk home, leaving in all different directions. I don’t remember those nights being hot either.

At some time, I don’t know exactly when, an intolerance for extremes sneaked in and became part of me. I don’t like the really cold days of winter, and I hate feeling hot and sweaty and strangled by the humidity in summer. The thermostat has been getting higher and higher on winter days, and the central air has been blowing more and more each summer. I remember seeing old ladies wearing sweaters on a balmy summer night, and I was mystified. My mother used to keep her house so hot in winter we’d wear t-shirts and complain. My neighbors find 78˚a comfortable AC temperature and I snorted quietly when they told me, but I can see it coming. The older I get the less I seem to adjust. I’ll have to keep the afghan close for winter and put on socks in the summer when the AC is blasting. My feet get really cold.

“Autumn arrives in the early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.”

Pseudo winter is the best I can call this. Today it is already 46° though tonight will be more typically winter, in the 20′s, but I don’t care. Night always finds me cozy and warm and at home. The weatherman says snow later in the week and predicts the cape will get less than an inch before the snow turns to rain. Boston may get more snow than we will but right now it may also have a new record for the least amount of snow as little more than 7 inches has fallen so far this whole winter, but March sometimes surprises us with a snow storm or two.

My garden is awash with green shoots, and the daffodil buds are prominent: there are four now. Last fall I planted all sorts of bulbs, and I don’t remember what is where on purpose. I want surprise when the flowers bloom and color returns to my garden.

Spring officially arrives on March 20th, and that is cause for celebration. My friends and I will go to the beach to see the sunrise on that first spring morning. Usually it is freezing. We sit in our beach chairs as if it were summer, but we wear winter hats and coats and wrap blankets around us as we wait and watch for the sky to lighten. The first beams appear then the top of the sun. We watch as more and more of the sun appears over the jetty. When morning has finally broken, we applaud and give a welcome to spring then we run for the warmth of the car. We go out for breakfast and toast the arrival of spring.

My mother was always surprised and wonderfully grateful when we gave her our bouquets, the dandelions picked off the lawn. She’d gush a bit, take our gifts and put them in a glass, usually a jelly glass, and then in the center of the table. We always thought they were the most beautiful yellow flowers ever, and I still think of that every time I see a dandelion. In my memory they are gifts.

“I ain’t ever had a job, I just always played baseball.”

In the Globe this morning was an article about people buying fertilizer and loam for their lawns. The author likened our current weather to that of Washington DC around this time of year. He said we are about two months ahead of our usual growth schedule. I can attest to that. The rhododendron in my front garden has buds. All over the rest of the garden are green shoots from the bulbs I planted last fall. The nights get chilly but the days are warm, in the 40′s, and tomorrow will be in the 50′s, but I’m not quite taken in by this quirky weather. Being a New Englander, I’m skeptical. I expect snow is probably right around the corner just waiting to catch us. I just can’t shake it.

The sports’ pages are more interesting since baseball’s spring training started. This morning I got a chuckle. Bobby Valentine, the new coach of the Red Sox, has announced that all players will ride the bus to spring training games. All I could think of were bus rides back in my day.

The oldest ruled the back of the bus, the elite section, first class. I pictured Youkalis and Ortiz sitting there, the only two players left from the 2004 team. Pedroia by virtue of his talent and work ethic would also be welcome. He’d be the one shooing away the lesser players. Rookies must sit in front. The rest of the team can sit in the middle seats. We always sang on bus trips so I imagined the Sox belting out the likes of Take Me Out to the Ballgame, Sweet Caroline with all the appropriate responses, Wild Thing and maybe even Shipping Up to Boston even though Papelbon left for the big bucks. Pedey would dance in the aisle and Bobby would have him sit down and behave. Speaking of Bobby, why is it that a grown man is still called Bobby by people other than his family? I guess it’s a sports thing where growing up often optional.

“Basically, my life is so boring, it’s embarrassing.”

It’s still winter. The little bit of snow we had has frozen. It cracks every time I walk over it. On the deck, Gracie’s paw prints are permanently etched in the ice, and she too makes noise as she walks on it to go down the stairs. She goes gently down the stairs and walks on one side where there is no ice. Smart dog that Gracie!

She and I have a few things to do today so we’ll both bundle. She’ll wear her Pendleton wool coat with the stripes while I will be dressed far less stylishly in a flannel shirt and a hoodie.

This morning I have already been productive, an unusual event for this early. I took my shower and have just started my second load of laundry. The bed is even made. I have no explanation for this sudden burst of energy. It may be guilt over the number of days of sloth I have enjoyed of late.

My life right now is boring. I don’t even have a book which holds my attention. I keep picking one up, reading a few chapters then putting it down to try another. Nothing is on television, not an uncommon problem, but I would love a good movie to hold me enthrall for a few hours. I haven’t much ambition left for today. I already used most of it up this morning but did save enough for my few errands.

A few minutes ago, I heard a bang upstairs then something falling. Some excitement I thought. First I accounted for all three animals: Fern on the couch pillow, check; Maddie on the seat cushion, check; Gracie with me, check. Then the two of us, the dog and I, raced upstairs, but I found nothing. Neither did she as Gracie just sat on the bed and watched. I checked the eaves but nothing there either. I am perplexed.

The washing machine just sounded. It’s time to move the clothes to the dryer. I guess I’m done here for the day.

“Nothing burns like the cold.”

“Marley was dead to begin with.” Okay, that is stolen directly from Dickens, but I did use quotation marks. I wanted a dramatic opening, and that is one of my favorites. Winter is holding sway was all I could come up with as my first line, and it’s a weak one. I wanted drama, I wanted a “Stella!” moment to describe the change in temperature.

It is now is 24° on the Cape and in the teens in Boston. The sunlight has a cold look, a sharpness, to it. The sky is a deep blue but its color lacks any warmth. When the breeze blows, I can feel it fly up my sleeves and down my neck. This is what I remember as being cold.

This is a bundle day, a pull out the afghan day and a nap under the warmth of the down comforter day. I’m going nowhere except upstairs for that nap. Earlier, I went to my usual Sunday breakfast. When the alarm went off, I jumped out of bed to turn it off then I jumped right back under the covers. I wanted to stay in that warm bed, and I know both Gracie and Fern hoped I would. They were warm cozy against me on opposite sides and didn’t move when I tried to get up. Finally I gave them no choice, and the three of us left the warmth of my bed.

The roads were empty this morning. I saw only a few cars, and after breakfast I saw some people walking into church. They were huddled together and bundled. Many of the old ladies wore long coats with fur around the collars. I suspect they also have boots at home in the closet, the kind which slip over shoes with clunky heels and are transparent. The hats they wore this morning were purely decorative.

I don’t have to ask today where winter has gone. I know exactly where it is.

“Surely as cometh the Winter, I know There are Spring violets under the snow.”

Last night I went to bed around one in the morning. It was raining enough that Gracie went under the deck to go to the bathroom. That’s her new strategy, and I applaud her ingenuity. When I woke up at 10 this morning, it was snowing and it still is. The snow is big and wet. The tree branches are covered, but the busy roads are not. I had to go to the dump, and I needed a few groceries so Gracie and I braved the elements. More people were out than I expected, but the dump was pretty quiet. The best part of the trash run was I didn’t have to leave my car. The high school basketball team is doing service at the dump and emptying trunks. They’re also throwing snowballs at each other from one side of the bins to the other. They are still at the enjoying snow stage of life.

When I got to my street, it had a layer of slush. Luckily, the temperature is above freezing now, and I hope it stays that way so the slush never turns to ice.

Today is a hot chocolate day, a mint hot chocolate day. It’s warm slippers, flannel pants and a sweatshirt day. It’s watch really bad science fiction on the TV from the couch with Gracie at my feet day. I know I’ll keep checking the snow accumulation as I’ve been doing that since I was a little kid. I press my face against the window and watch the flakes. Today it is a gentle snow which falls quietly, unaccompanied by wind. The snow is lovely today.

“Winter, a lingering season, is a time to gather golden moments, embark upon a sentimental journey, and enjoy every idle hour.”

A dusting of snow was on the lawn this morning. It was the second dusting of the winter, and both are the only snow we’ve seen. The day is getting warmer, already up 5° since I first checked, and the warmth has made the dusting a memory. Today will be in the 40′s. During previous winters, a day in the 40′s was considered almost balmy but not this winter. 40 during the day seems to be the norm. The nights, however, are still cold, even freezing, and they remind us that this is really winter.

On our way to school on some windy winter mornings, we’d walk backwards when we had to go around the field at the foot of our hill. The wind whipped across that field with such ferocity I used to wonder if my nose would freeze and break off my face. Our coats were blown by the wind and our legs got so cold they turned red. We’d hurry as fast as backwards would let us to get pass that field because beyond the field was a street filled with houses on both sides which protected us from the wind. The cold, though, was something else. No matter how much my mother bundled us we were freezing by the time we got to school. We’d wear sweaters under our winter coats, and my mother shoved hats on our heads, mittens on our hands and scarfs around our necks. I even remember wearing some pink underwear my mother bought me which were like mini-leggings and went down as far as the tops of my knees. They were God-awful ugly but kept me a bit warmer. I prayed no one would ever see them.

Now, I am never outside long enough to get really cold. The other day I brought the bird feeders into the house as it was too chilly to stand outside and fill them. I’m cold only for a few minutes until my car gets toasty warm. I run to the store and run back to the car. I look outside the window here in my den, and I swear I can see the cold. I decide there is no reason whatsoever to go out, and I sit here and read in the warmth of my house. Like bears, I believe hibernating is the best winter survival tool.