For my dear friend Givinya...

My dear bloggy friend Givinya De Elba and I were chatting online a little while ago, she from tomorrow and summer as it is Down Under right now, and me from this evening and the dead of winter as it is here in upstate New York. In her corner of the world, they are having an insane heat wave, whilst in my corner of the world, it is cold-n-snowy as usual. With the assistance of a handy C-to-F converter, we ooohed and aaaahed and exclaimed about the extreme differences in our weather. She shared with me a set of adorable pictures of a wild koala who was photographed attempting to cool off on some family's porch in a tub of water (thereby reinforcing, as I told her, my American impressions and stereotypes of what Australia must surely be like* - koalas dangling from every tree branch, kangaroos munching on the veggie garden and packs of dingoes stealing babies at every opportunity. Oh, and let's not forget the crocs and sharks and how certainly all Australians must dress like this:



or



Unless of course, they look more like this....



or



which would be absolutely acceptable.) Anyhow, I told Givinya that I would have to take some pictures of our current weather for her, so after I tore myself away from the computer long enough to fix dinner for the family and all that jazz, I grabbed my camera and snapped a few shots. Sadly, there is nary a cute koala in any of them, actually there was nothing living to be seen on my street, excepting for a gentleman snowblowing his driveway up the block...

Anyhow, here now, for Givinya and anyone else who might care to view and imagine the frozen wasteland that is my property and neighborhood, is what it looked like outside the toasty walls of Chez Smith at approximately quarter past six this evening:



Above: The view out our front door. Note out by the street, how it is so much easier to collect our mail in the winter, as the snowbanks are high enough that should any mail drop from your mittened grasp as you leeeeean out your car window to collect it, the mail falls mere inches, so you don't even have to open your car door and reach all the way down to the street!



Above: The view out the window above my kitchen sink. Ahh, the joy of sitting on the deck, sipping a nice, cool drink.....only about six more months until such a thing will be a reality!



Above: The view out our back door. The rest of the deck, the back yard, and the pond behind our property. What's that? You can't quite make it out? Not even the birdbath by the back gate? All obliterated by a pile of white stuff in the pitch blackness that heralds 6pm here in the winter? *sigh* Exactly.

Yeah, brrrrrrrrr.

*Oh, and by the way, just to be clear, I'm totally kidding about Australia. I'm positively chartreuse with envy that Givinya and all the other citizens actually get to live there, and fervently hope and dream that someday, Down Under will be a destination the Smith family visits. And as far as Aussie couture is concerned, I also ought to mention that Kiddo is wholly obsessed with Bindi Irwin - aka "Bindi the Jungle Girl" -



and frequently requests that I style her hair just like Bindi's, please Mommy!, which I do by braiding it when it is wet, letting it dry, and then combing out. I refuse to ever buy a crimping iron, unless I'm suddenly guest starring on Lost and get flashed back to the 1980s when such purchases were acceptable.

And honestly, even if the majority of Australia was like this.........



That'd be a total hoot, so completely fine by me! I know, I know, only certain bits of the Outback are that exciting, I know... Still, Givinya does assure me that there are parts of her amazing country that do have the dangling koalas and hopping all over the place roos, so that's definitely cool enough by me!

(And I'm totally sure that Givinya is just dying to come 'round the globe to upstate NY now that she's seen what our lovely weather this time of year is like, right? Right?)