It's One of Those days.... again.

I have no "purpose" today, but there's some consolation in the fact that Shakespeare might have had the same problem if he had been blogging.
So I will kind of do a collage of things for you, starting with a bit of guilt at complaints about the weather. It's foggy and cold today. REALLY FOGGY AND COLD....

The sun tried to shine and did for a while yesterday. The fog backed away and we had sunshine even though it was very cold.

and then, in the afternoon, it came back with the wind and settled into the river canyon for good.

This morning the thermometer read:

And it froze last night, breaking the hose that goes to the goat house for water.  But, it's OK, because then I get pictures from my friend Dawn, the "charming baglady", who lives in Michigan and I feel like a whiny baby for complaining about a 36 degree high and the 28 degree low.
Dawn talks about blizzards, wind chill factors, lake effect snow, loss of electricity and how she can't get to the store for days on end. She says that they do come and remove the snow from the street but it piles up at the edge of the driveway and freezes into ice that can't be driven over so if they are home.... they are stuck.
This is the view from her house. She loves the Michigan winters. She's always been tough.
This is her street and that is her neighbor's house in the distance.

And this is Mugs, her dog, after a romp outside....

Isn't that the cutest dog with snow on face. Wanna kiss?
Anyway, I know that I live in California and part of me is glad that I do. I don't live were it's always below 0 in the winter. I know I'm complaining about nothing compared to other places in the world but .... I'm sorry. It's cold for the California Foothills above Sacramento.  There.... I said it. I'm a wimp. An old wimp. If the rain and the cold would get together and snow for a day then I might be so delighted that I wouldn't feel like this... like Brownie, but it hasn't and, well..... Brownie isn't even talking about it today. Maybe he will have something to say tomorrow.
So, I feel like Seinfeld today. I have a Blog and I really don't have a lot to say, but I'm finding things to talk about the longer I sit in front of this computer. Maybe that's what Shakespeare did. Sat at his desk and dipped his pen in the ink well long enough that he finally came up with "a rose by any another name.." and " How sharper than a serpent's tooth...." etc. Genius is just hiding under this pile of notes on top of my desk. It's going to happen any moment now.....
Maybe not...
 
When I was at my sister's house during Christmas they were feeding the birds in their front yard. Sis, her son Ben and I watched the little Chickadees and Sparrows eating the birdseed from the livingroom window and I was taking pictures.
You know how they say that Opportunity knocks? Well, I have photographic evidence that, even in nature, there are opportunist. This rat was on that birdseed. He was darting in and out of the Star Jasmine grabbing all the seed he could get. 

Now I don't know how you feel about Rats. I have fairly good feelings about them. I don't want one in bed with me or biting me but I think they are very interesting creatures. My Dad use to talk about the huge river rats up on the Russian River when he was young. He said one crawled into his sleeping bag one night and, luckily, didn't bite him but he never slept outside again that I can remember. 
We had a white pet Rat in our 6th grade classroom in Pine Grove school when I was working for a living and he was the cutest little guy (rat) I had ever seen. He would wait for the kids to come and play with him. He would sit on their shoulders and laps. He was part of the classroom. He was cool.
So I don't get all hysterical when I see a rat and it appears that birds don't either. My sister pointed out that they all seemed to be OK with the rat taking some of the seed. She said that she wished all beings could live in harmony like this... sharing and coexisting together. And in a perfect world... she's right. It would be wonderful. I agreed, but I think it had more to do with the size of their brains   and the fact that there was a lot of birdseed to go around. 
In other parts of the world it's more like this....

...and that's just scary.