If the eyes are the "window to the soul," then this is "the view from my window" for which our editor has put out the open call.  

I've heard that everything is upside down.

Touch football in Fargo while the best ski conditions in the West are on the back side of the hill they call "Sandia" in Albuquerque.

I hear you.

"Sandia?

"Why that's like charging down a mosquito bite."

The headwaters of last year's record flooding are more suitable for a spot of croquet than snowmobiling.

We in the western part of our state got pounded, nay spanked, by a series of storms and weather patterns. First there was a rather benign snow in early December, but it was followed by a cold snap that could make one depending on his own firewood feel like the squirrel who didn't attend to his nuts.

Pronto.

With hastily sawn rounds stashed under tailgate and motor, 10" of really dense, wet snow fell just a few days before the solstice.

The following week we added another foot, though it was the drier kind.

White Christmas?

The hell you say.

We spent the week afterwards breaking down our road a short distance at a time.

Making longer and longer forays then returning, glad not to have gotten hopelessly stuck (rinse, repeat for about four days), we finally hit the now melting county road the Thursday before New Year's.

And made it back with a newfound shot of confidence, 2 shots remaining of the Sapphire, and about four beers.

Plus, we had thoughtful groceries.

A chained Toyota got us out and in the next day.

With supplies.

Made it again last week, though without the need for chains.

Got to admit it's getting better.

But it's almost as though La Niña is a witch who gets you stuck, sends you a few gratuitous (if pretty) icicles,

pats you on the fanny, and sends you off to a summer of drought.

The view from my window is, ergo, hardly Pollyanna-ish.

Cabin fever can be a terrible thing.

Unless you have a hobby that's equal to or better than Gardol^®.

I love to photograph my cats when we're stuck huddled around the wood stove.

I've featured them here before.

The mostly white one responds to "photoshoot" without so much as an over-the-top Barbara Woodhouse parody.

See.

The other one is more complicated.

To say she has a nice face is to say the Taj Mahal is one swanky cabaña. (All band-naming rights reserved.)

"Moesita" is the mostly white one. "Jeanne Valjean" is the mostly fat one.

She has turned a simple scrap of indoor/outdoor carpeting into polypropylene floss. (All band-naming rights similarly reserved.)

Scavanging every last fleck of catnip.

Evidently.

As for outside, the return to even modest colors is as welcome as stars must be to a city dweller.

If we're lucky, the monsoons will send us some deathly looking mushrooms and then some turning oak leaves. You know: the usual.

But coming out of the wobble, such as we are, even rusted hulks can seem beautiful.

You've felt the wobble, right?

I didn't mean you've looked it up on Wikipedia; I meant actually got a little woozy.

I know I did.

So if you've looked up your sunrise/sunset tables, you know that mornings come later still, though we're past the solstice.

But evenings come sufficiently later to make totals for daylight longer.

Yes, that wobble.

I can see it from my window.

"Edges"