Let it snow. And snow. And snow.

There are some things that make P-roc go all soft and fuzzy and sentimental. We're not always sure what these things will be. Sometimes it's things that make sense, like newborn babies, or kittens, and sometimes it's the page of the book that has a picture of a vole eating a strawberry. Ugh.

But this Christmas he got a gift that invariably makes him scrunch up his shoulders and say awwww and act all protective: a stuffed snowy owl, who he has aptly named "Cutie" and who is apparently a she. He loves Cutie and won't go to sleep without her next to him every night. Score one for Santa.



Christmas was a good one, all around. I got the pick-axe I wanted, Matt got a book about how to make paper airplanes and other tricks to do with things lying around the house, and P got Cutie and The Biggest Snowstorm Ever.

We weren't PLANNING on driving home in a snowstorm, but we stopped in Philly on our way home to NYC and kinda sorta got stuck. Our good friends the Blankenbecklers took pity on us and let us crash at their place, and we had a great, cozy time hanging out and drinking hot cocoa and talking late into the night...




Pedrito mainly spent a lot of time piling their poofs into taller and taller piles.

Then when all the streets in Philly were plowed, we got back in the car and drove to NYC. It was all smooth sailing (ooh, look at those other poor cars stuck in the snowdrifts on the side of the freeway, aren't we glad we stayed in Philly last night, ooh look, all the exit and entrance ramps are blocked with buses stuck in the snow, yikes, etc) until we got over the bridge into Brooklyn, where a sign warned us that the highway ahead wasn't passable. No problemo, we'll take the side streets, we're only about 6 miles from home...

4 hours later, we gave up, left the car doubleparked in a snowdrift on the edge of the street and went to spend the night with the younger Blankenbeckler generation, at Josh's house in Kensington. We were only about 3 miles from home, but we were pretty well pooped.

We probably got stuck 15 times, and had 15 different Brooklyn ethnic groups help push/shovel us out. The heavy metal kids from Bay Ridge were great, the 7-year-old Arab kid standing in the middle of the intersection directing traffic was great ("Nah, nah, dat street won't take you all da way up to Pak Slope, take a left heah"), the older Hasidic man who offered to help was great, the weatherbeaten white lady who told us we could stay at her place ("I'm number 938, that house right there, come on over if you get stuck, I've got chicken soup and vodka") - she was awesome.

The bartender who let P and me play pool while Josh and Matt painstakingly dug a parking spot out of a snowbank was great, and once they were done, it was great of him to come outside and calmly point out that they were parked in a snow emergency lane. And even the hundreds of Turkish/Hispanic/Irish/whatever guys out joyriding around in their obscenely huge SUVs, wasted off their gourds, were somewhat amusing.

And the next morning, our car wasn't towed, we drove straight up to our neighborhood without getting stuck, the ONLY side street that was plowed was ours, and a friendly black guy and younger kid helped us shovel out a big space for his minivan and our car.

When we got home, we played in the snow.



And conveniently, it just keeps snowing, so parking rules keep getting suspended, so we haven't had to move the car at all since then, and it's been cold, so there's still PLENTY of snow around. We're due for some more tomorrow, actually. Maybe we should invite some Blankenbecklers over...