This afternoon it started to snow and so now, at midnight, there are about three or four inches covering the ground. It looks beautiful, all the bushes bending under the weight of the snow and the moon making it look very bright outside. I was trying to sleep, without much success, when I was reminded of a funny story.

When we moved from the city to the 'burbs two years ago, we were all set to spend our first night in the new house. All was well until about 2:00am, when this horrible grinding noise started outside and wouldn't let up. It was a rhythmic sound that was unlike any we'd ever heard before. It went on for hours. It was terribly loud and creepy and we couldn't figure out what it was (thought maybe it was some weird middle of the night suburban thing), but it eventually stopped and we went to sleep. The next night, the same thing happened and that's when we panicked. And that's when we figured it out - the reason the house was empty before we bought it, the reason we got such a great deal, the reason we couldn't understand why nobody snapped it up before us. The land behind us that was supposedly 'conservation land' had to be some sort of oil drilling facility or steel mill and it only operated in the dead of night!

Did I mention it was the end of February? Did I mention that it snowed every day and night? Did I mention that the sound of a snowplow's blade grinding along the street's pavement sounds like what I'd imagine an oil drill must sound like? Yes, it was just a couple of snowplows clearing all the town's streets to keep them clear for the morning. Eventually we figured it out but not until after we'd planned how to sucker some other poor family into buying the house that we'd been lured into purchasing.

And, speaking of suburban experiences, when I came downstairs a bit ago to do some work, I was sitting in my office watching my cat play with a toy in the living room. Except it turns out, the toy was giving Midnight a run for her money, and it wasn't a toy at all. It was a mouse. In my house. We're used to Midnight bringing home all sorts of furry creatures, but we have never hosted one in our own home. Lucikly, my cat is a fierce hunter and she had that mouse in her mouth very quickly, whereupon (after I woke my husband up) we chased Midnight around the dining room table until she dropped the mouse into a plastic bucket and the mouse was deposited outside. Very near the conservation land that we once thought would gush petroleum at any moment.