When the poo is covered in snow . . .

Thanks, Barrie, for the wastebasket advice, this has become something of a quest for me of late. There is, apparently, an alarming shortage of small wastebaskets with lids in Kanab, UT, big kitchen size ones are no problem, but I don't want one of those, I want a nice little one with a lid that can serve as a bit of a deterrent for any dogs I might bring home for a night. A little one can be tucked under the sink in my bathroom, not so with a big one, so, the wastebaskets are continuing to occupy too much of my brain space.

In other news, we are getting slapped around something fierce by Mother Nature this week, which has led to much snow-covered fun-filled shenanigans up at the Lodges. For those of you not experienced in golf cart driving in the snow without a windshield, let me tell you, it is both fun and frightening all at the same time. As the snow began to pile up (we are probably currently over a foot of snow right now - in the desert . . .), the golf carts did as well. One could find carts abandoned in several not-necessarily-road areas over the last couple of days, just piling up with snow and waiting for rescue (as a side note, let me just say, none of them were mine).

As for the ones still running, actually moving (especially from a stop) could be problematic, too. As I was coming around a turn, I saw co-worker Keely spinning her wheels and trying to "kick start" the cart (keeping one foot on the gas and pushing at the ground with the other foot). In an attempt to be helpful, I shouted up to her to pick up her feet and I would bump her with my cart to get going. Immediately after I finished yelling, she put her foot back in the cart, leading me to think she had heard me, but that was apparently not the case. When I bumped her, she jumped so far off the seat I thought she might hit her head on the roof and then turned around to see what had just happened. Upon seeing me, she began laughing and announced that I was lucky I didn't make her pee her pants, we couldn't stop laughing as I continued to push her struggling cart down the road.

There is just something about snow that makes it a lot easier to just let it go and laugh. It cushions you when you fall and provides easy ammo when you are annoyed, there is just something fun about snow - of course Clair may beg to differ, if I were surrounded by snow 24/7 as far as the eye could see for six months, I would probably not be so fond of it. But for us desert dwellers, it is kind of fun.

Snow does lead to a lot more maintenance work and throws the normal schedule at the Lodges into a blender. When we knew the first storm was coming in, we got all the normal first thing in the morning stuff done and then went out to start poop scooping - frozen poop has a lot of good qualities, less stinky, not mushy, etc, but I was told to keep my mouth shut when trying to whack frozen poo loose from the frozen ground (I haven't made the mistake of learning this lesson from personal experience, yet). We also get to go around and beat the ever-loving crap out of the shade tarps to knock the snow off before they collapse under the weight of the white stuff. It really is quite fun beating on them with broom sticks and throwing your whole body weight into the sagging tarps and jumping around to get the higher up parts, but boy do your legs hurt in the morning. And you do tend to accumulate other casualties during the process, we managed to punch a small hole in one tarp - turns out wooden broomsticks are better suited for not damaging the tarps - though, we did lose a wooden broomstick to a frozen tarp, snapped it like a toothpick which also led to nearly peed pants at the hilarity of it all and an wonderfully puzzled look on Theresa the dogs face at the two spastic nut jobs in her yard.

Sort of like this, but more puzzled.

Finally, I thought I would include a few more of the Favorite Photos of the Week from the BF Web site.

A view of the canyon in the snow.
A co-worker's dogs, patiently waiting in the snow for mom to go home.
How can you not smile at a face like that? His name fits him well - Charmer!

(All photos copyright Best Friends Animal Society.)