Snow Tires

Sometimes you just need to marvel at what kids come up with.

My son was playing in the back after a recent storm with his wagon. Given the way the yard faces and the number of trees surrounding the yard we have something of a glacier there until the temp either gets so warm often enough (more likely) or direct light hits it (less likely). Kidlet is undaunted by the glacier. Running around the yard this was the result.

Now being the sort of kid he is, he looked at it and immediately said, "Snow tires!"

We live in a snowy area. I have never once in my life bought snow tires. We did put new tires on the truck about 2 years ago. To this day he still says that I have "new tires". The only place that I can even think that he's heard about "snow tires" is from the movie Cars. Luigi is either trying to sell the snow tires to Lightening McQueen or feed them to the tractors that are munching on his more valuable radials. Why Luigi even stocked snow tires in the desert is another story. Given that until Cars 2 came along Cars was his favorite movie, he'd watched it quite a bit. But 2 small lines in a movie about snow tires apparently made an impression.

Running around the back with the wagon is still a favorite activity regardless of the level of snow. Sometimes we get snow tires and sometimes we don't. He still says, "I like snow tires better than road tires." It's moments like these when your heart becomes so much larger than just an organ in your body.

Go on, my little guy, let's go make some snow tires.

The Little Man

I was sitting with my son last night in the rocking chair and this little poem popped into my head. I gave him a shortened version while "walking" my fingers up and down his arms.

The Little Man

There once was a little man about this high.
He loved to walk, but no one was really sure why.
He'd walk up one side and down the other.

He'd walk all the way home just to check on his mother.
He'd walk on the inside or the outside,
whether or not there was someone else beside.
Sometimes he'd reach the top,
and sometimes you wonder if he'd ever stop.
When he got to the bottom after all that down,
he'd keep on going back on up without a frown.
People all over town would start to talk,
But the little man just liked to walk.

Little things that count

I'm going to say something that may sound rather odd to most folks. Last Friday night, I was thankful that my husband still smoked. You see there is a reason I make this statement. One of our neighbors has outdoor cats. Not something I would do in this climate as we can have rather harsh winters. We also seem to be in a string of hard weather winters around here as well. Then again, these are not my cats.

Recently, the neighbor went out of town. They provided food and water. However I don't believe they provided enough food and water. Granted, the animals are not skeletal nor are they normally ill-cared-for. But in this case, one of the kitties made its way across the street to socialize with my hubby. Hubby is a kitty friendly guy. Cats of all shapes and sizes love him. He came back inside from his smoke and mentioned that he thought the neighbor's cat was hungry.

After talking about it a bit we put out some food for the cat. See, we recently lost a cat (she was 17) and we still have some left over cat food that I haven't made myself throw out yet. Normally I choose not to interfere. In this case, I will NOT let something suffer when it's obvious that the critter is hungry and no one is home to feed it. The cat ate every bite we put out.

These people are not cruel. I think they just don't quite understand the volume of food required by their pets when they leave for extended time periods. I heard that this isn't the first time that hubby has intervened. They were away at the Christmas Holiday as well and underestimated the food requirement. The sad part of that was he encountered another neighbor doing the same thing as they had also noticed the hungry kitties.

Sometimes you just need to do something a little nice for someone. Next time I see them, I'll mention that they need to up the volume of nutritional supplements they leave out for their animals when they're gone.