mistressofmuses (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mistressofmuses) wrote2025-12-03 08:06 pm
mistressofmuses) wrote2025-12-03 08:06 pm
Winter is a season!
It snowed!
This year has been bizarrely light on snow for our area. The weather stayed warm well into November, and our first snow only came last Saturday, as barely a dusting. I'm not complaining - I've joked that I find snow acceptable between Thanksgiving and New Year's only - but as usual ~we need the moisture~. I don't think I ever expected our snow to *actually* hold off until after Thanksgiving, and it's true that I also don't want things to be on fire all next year. (That can and does coexist with the fact that I would be happy to literally never see another snowflake.)
But at least if it is going to snow, this particular storm was very aesthetic!
Yesterday, Alex and I went over to my mom's house for a while to help her sort through some old stuff of hers. A while back, she expressed to me the desire to try and sell off a lot of the "stuff" she has accumulated. I think a combination of her mom passing away, and then trying to help her sister with her hoarded house in preparation for moving, and her own 70th birthday, made her really want to make sure that she doesn't wind up with a lot of junk. A lot of what she has isn't really junk: she has antique tools of her grandfather's, some china, some other genuinely antique things. But she'd rather get rid of it now - and maybe get some money for it - rather than leave it to be dealt with after she's gone.
We did look at a lot of the tools, so many of which are really cool! It's amazing how well some of them were made. Nicely carved hardwood handles, a few with carved decoration, things like that. A few it makes me sad to think of getting rid of, because they are such an example of "they don't make 'em like they used to!" but I also understand my mom's desire to part with things that she doesn't actually use.
Bella and Jaspurr had an accidental face-to-face meeting. I went to the bathroom, and came back to Jaspurr hiding under a chair, and Bella sniffing him. Alex and my mom thought he was upstairs and that Bella was just sniffing around more generally, or they would have intervened. While Jaspurr wasn't loving it, the meeting actually went really well! He didn't hiss or swipe at her, and she was just happily interested. She was easy to call away (though then wanted to go back) and was just mildly excited. He did growl at her the second time she returned, and she left him alone. They later also had a quick meeting in my mom's room, while he was up on a table and Bella was on the floor.
Jaspurr didn't love Bella being there, and ended up spending the whole night in my mom's room after, but it really did go about as well as I could have hoped! We've never gotten to truly test Bella around cats (beyond seeing them at more of a distance), and Jaspurr hasn't gotten to interact with other animals since being with my mom and Taylor. I'm actually quite pleased.
I had a dentist appointment this morning, and since my dentist is only about five minutes from my mom's house, in light of the forecast snow overnight, I spent the night at my mom's.
The birds were happy to have the feeders today in the snow. A towhee and several house finches!
These couple pictures are a little blurry, but of my favorite random bird at my mom's:
This little girl on the right does not have snow on her head - she has a white patch on the top of her head! She's also not a white-crowned sparrow or anything like that, she's just a house finch with a leucistic patch.
You can see more of the patch here, though it blends in a bit with the snow. She's been coming to my mom's feeders for about three years now, she thinks. I'm always happy to see her. :)
My dentist appointment went well! I'd been dreading it a little bit, because I had to have *such* extensive dental work done back around 2020-2021. A decade+ of no dental care, and many years of really precarious living situations, plus probably some general mental health garbage really took their toll.
I missed my last cleaning over the summer because of my grandmother's memorial, and so it'd been closer to a year than six months, and while I hadn't noticed any issues, I was very afraid it'd be worse than expected.
It wasn't! No cavities, which always feels like a big win, haha.
The weird hole in my jaw (where I had an extra baby tooth removed when I was young) has not gotten any worse. It's always exciting when every dentist and hygienist that sees my x-rays has an instinctive, horrified gasp. They assumed this was a crisis that would require bone and tissue grafts... and somehow, it's all very stable. The teeth around the gap aren't unstable or in pain, the jaw itself is not deteriorating. This was my five-year x-ray appointment, and my hygienist was delighted when she said that it looks the same as it did five years ago. "Science would disagree with me, but it really does look like it's just... not causing problems." I love that science can't explain my jaw.
Jaspurr, having returned to the main floor this morning, ha. So regal.
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I am very pleased about the dental appointment. I hate dental stuff, so it's such a relief when it's all fine.
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It does suck that your mom has to get rid of such cool stuff, but I can totally understand why. It was a bear to fit mom into a smaller house after my dad died (and they'd previously sold their farm and moved in with my grandfather, so there was all the family stuff from generations to get rid of as well).
I'm glad the first meeting of Bella and Jaspurr went well. And that your dentist appointment went well!
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Yeah... I am glad that it's something my mom is thinking about and working on now, rather than waiting. Even though it does make me sad to think of some of it going away, if only because I know it would be so difficult/impossible to replace.
Very relieved about both the dentist and the unplanned Bella-Jaspurr meeting!
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And good job to Bella & Jaspurr! That really is a regal pic. Cats <3 I also really like that birdfeeder, does it have a platform for catching the seeds?? or is it just above a table?
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I'm quite happy that Bella and Jaspurr had a pretty relaxed and neutral meeting! He is capable of being quite regal, when he's not asleep and snoring, haha.
The tray underneath is actually a shallow birdbath, I think, but my mom uses it more as a tray feeder. Especially with birds like the towhees, they scrape at the seeds and end up kicking so much off the feeder, having the multiple levels helps, ha.
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We do at least typically get four seasons. While we got the nice long fall this year, I hope it doesn't mean winter is going to cling. January - March can often just be a dismal grey slog of mostly cold and gross slush.
I don't really usually mind hot as fuck. I'll take it over miserably cold any day. I suppose it's too much to ask for to have it be pleasantly warm all the time, haha.
Those late-season freak snow and ice storms are the WORST.
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The snow is so pretty! It's snowing here now and looks a lot like your first photo outside my office window. It's really surprising that it snowed so late!
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I was so relieved that the accidental meeting between him and Bella was such a non-event! They've seen each other before, but usually him upstairs staring down at her through the railing.
This was at least a very picturesque snow! I was very surprised that it held off so long this season. (Allegedly this was only our *second* latest snow on record, but I do not remember a year when it was later.)