Fox Urine.

The squirrel guy said it was snowing in Summerfield this morning. The church ladies over at the daycare say the snow event for later in the week will actually be rain. I've looked at no map and have no outside information and so I'll trust them each, and why not? I left the Toad with the church ladies, and the squirrel guy is about to save my life. If I'll trust the outbuilding and the boy to these people, surely I can trust the weather to them, too.

Though it did have that snow look out there when I first got up—that leaden low gray that makes you hope you've got ingredients enough in the pantry to last a day or two. We had nothing make the ground here. Do pay attention Tuesday into Wednesday—something's going to come out of the sky, they say. We just don't maybe know precisely what it'll be. The church ladies do. We here at the forecast don't. Yet.

Squirrel guy, you say? In Have Yourself A Merry Little Weekend news, I spent Friday afternoon q-tipping fox urine into the outbuilding ceiling (on the advice of said squirrel guy) in the hopes of keeping the squirrel that was digging through the ceiling and into the living space from having total success in that endeavor. Also I blared, day and night, Rock 101 The Rabid Jackal, or whatever the hell they call it. It worked. No squirrels inside. And by the end of today, here's hoping no squirrels at all. The guy showed up in a big panel van painted with cartooned woodland creatures. What's going to happen to my particular beasts is apparently not going to be so cartooned, but the guy says that's how it has to be, and I believe him. I trust him. I actually want to hug him a little, but I'm afraid it might be too soon. I am not the guy who does well with repetitive noises either of the actual or the intellectual variety, and this snugs neatly into both categories. My god I love an expert. He will save us. He will save us all.

Cold out there, friends and fans of seasonality. It's cold and it stays cold. We break forty degrees around here these days, like we did yesterday afternoon, and it feels balmy, feels like we ought to rush out and dogwalk our way around. I'm ready for daffodils, I said to the church ladies this morning. I'm ready for spring, the one of them said. Except it's time for neither of those things, is the thing. I guess we'll have to hang on a little longer.