The older I get the faster the year goes.  Yet the winters usually drag forever.  I guess that’s what it’s like when you live in the Northeast.  I  wish spring and fall had the longevity that winter has.  January consumes about four months to every one month of the other seasons.  I really don’t like snow.  It was worse when Rich and I worked, but I still don’t like it when we are predicted to have a lot of snow.  We live in the snow belt.  The snow belt as it pertains to us is directly related to Lake Erie.  If you live within about 45 minutes of a Great Lake, you are considered in the “snow belt.”  That means that the lake dumps a lot more snow in my area than it does directly on its shoreline.  I like to think of it as kind of a bummer.  If you live twenty minutes south of us, you don’t get the amount of snow we get.  My in laws lived about 75 miles from us and they never got the snow we got so they never understood why we were freaky about getting home if the weather was predicted to get bad.  We have driven home in some horrible blizzards and I definitely don’t miss doing that.  I always get a laugh out of the people who think snow is so pretty.  Trust me, if you lived anywhere near a snow belt, you wouldn’t think it was quite so lovely after all.  Last year we decided to spend December in North Carolina and visit with my sister and her family for the month.  We had to medicate our youngest golden retriever who hates the car and our older golden retriever got stress colitis and yes, it’s exactly like it sounds.  We were only a minute away from our beach house when she started whining and pacing and by the time we reached the house, she had diarrhea all over the other dog, herself and the backseat (that was luckily covered with a sheet.)  About a week and a half later, she got this weird thing that veterinarians in the North call, ” Old Dog Encephalitis”.  They have no balance and their eyes twitch back and forth and they tilt their head.  It’s supposed to last three to seven days and they are usually ok, but the summer before, we lost our labrador retriever (that’s in the photos with me) to the same disease.  So we were FREAKED out.  The veterinarian in North Carolina had never diagnosed a case of it and yet where we live, vets can diagnose it over the telephone, it’s so common.  We knew exactly what needed to be done so we asked the vet for prednisone, something for nausea and dizziness.  The dizziness makes it so they can’t walk, so Rich carried Aggie up and down the outside stairs for her to go to the restroom.  He forgot we were near the water so the stairs always had a slippery mist on them and he fell down the steps twice while holding our 90 pound dog. Being the greatest guy ever,  he never let Aggie out of his protective embrace, so the only one who got hurt was Rich.  Aggie got better quickly but when it was time to make the 12 hour trip home, we decided to give her the same anxiety medication as Bella.  Bella was still freaked, Aggie, who was 15 pounds heavier than Bella, couldn’t move.  Rich lifted her into the car and we were off.  We stayed in a hotel that was roughly halfway home, and the next morning they were predicting an ice storm.  We were minutes ahead of that storm the whole way home.  Once we got home, it never stopped snowing until May and I am not making this up.  The whole month of December there was no snow at home, but the minute we get back, it never stopped.  With that trip always in the back of our minds, we have not been able to consider taking another road trip with the dogs and I could never leave them for a month, especially when Aggie is almost 15.

So now you have my N/W PA snow 101 tutorial..it isn’t pretty.

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