What a weather roller-coaster today has been. Bad enough that when I woke it was to discover Irving was nowhere in sight. I hadn't felt or heard anything when he went downstairs this morning. By 7:30 he was out in the backyard shovelling the walkways. Do most people shovel snow off their backyard walkways? Only people who foster little dogs, I'll warrant. When I finally found myself awake and confused, down I went, Jackie and Jillie in tow, to let them out to the back so they could join Irving as he finished up the last of the shovelling. A just-in-time event.

The snow was piled fairly high, we judged about 20 cm, with a thin crust of ice over top. It wasn't the slight layer of light fluff I shovelled in the backyard yesterday. This was some serious shovelling. I urged Irving back into the house; the porch and front walkway could wait. Breakfast first. I found myself taking eggs out of the refrigerator, then remembered I'd planned to make rice pudding for breakfast this morning.

As we sat at breakfast taking our time, we realized that it was raining. Soon after breakfast I went out with Jackie and Jillie and we were being treated to steady freezing rain. But the temperature was rising and before long the rain picked up, no longer dropping liquid ice but heavy rain battering the windows, the snow piled on the roofs of the garden shed and the light metal roof of the deck canopy. This snow evidently wasn't meant to last.

In fact, as the day wore on, the rain was relentless as it ate away at the snow. Jillie hates the rain, but natural urges brought her back out to the backyard where she couldn't find a dry spot for herself to position over, and the rain kept annoying her. She remembered the snowpack from previous winters, hard enough eventually so she could walk on the accumulated snow, and dry enough to be comfortable where she would squat. The walkways were clean of snow, but wet and she didn't consider them squat-worthy. Instead she kept trying to position herself on the snow and to her consternation kept sinking into the soft, melting stuff. Life can be so confusing when you're a little dog and certainties suddenly evaporate.

No chance for us to get out at all, unless we hankered to be lashed with frigid rain, while still having to struggle with piles of slushy snow underfoot in a 4C atmosphere of rainfog. Which was all right, we had plenty to do in the  house to keep us absorbed and busy. Not so much Jackie and Jillie, restive as always when we embark on a  house-cleaning spree.

I decided in the face of 'this kind of day' to make a comfort meal for dinner and started off by poaching pears for dessert. I pre-cooked beets with the intention of slipping them out of their skins in the preparation of Harvard beets to accompany the chicken-mushroom stew over couscous I planned for dinner. Little did I know when I picked up the bag of little beets at the supermarket with winter meals in mind that these were radicalized beets. Beets with  mind of their own and as such they refused to part with their skin to allow me to slice them into even little circles. Who did I think I was, anyway?

One never knows when dissent may be facing you despite the most mundane of plans going awry. Who ever heard of renegade beets? Eventually the deed was done and with spare time on my hands I set out to harass Jackie and Jillie a bit. Camera-wise, that is. For some peculiar reason they're suspicious of the camera, of my leaning over toward them with that devilish device. Intruding on their space, so to speak. 

By four o'clock it had long become obvious the rain wasn't intending to stop any time soon. Getting out for a hike through the ravine completely unfeasible. Not only was the rain continuing, but by then it was also dark. We resigned ourselves to lounging about, doing some reading in our warm, comfortable house. And our puppies thoroughly approved as they set about getting in our faces.