I woke up this morning with a gasp because in my dream a fox had climbed up a pole and a fence and was preparing to eat my cat.

Only it wasn’t my cat, it was my friend’s cat named Peanut.

A cat my daughter cried over for ten minutes straight last night because she says our friends are giving him away. I have no idea the background for this breakdown or this story about Peanut The Cat. All I know is I am not adopting another cat and I am not eating chocolate before bed again because it produced some really odd dreams. Not only did I dream about the fox stealthy walking across a snowy backyard that wasn’t ours so it could climb a pole and fence and eat our cat that was not really our cat, but I also dreamed about New Kids on the Block lip-syncing in concert, which yes I am sure did, and does still, happen. (Yes, they are still touring. I know. I too hope they are up on their health insurance because they might break a hip.)

I woke up from the dream before the fox ate my cat, by the way, but not before the cat in the dream let out a horrible yowl.

That yowl haunted me so I stayed up for a while scrolling Instagram before drifting off for another 20-minute snooze.

When I woke up for good, I looked outside and discovered the weather forecasters are apparently drinking booze these days because last week they prepared us three days in advance for a storm that never came and yesterday they prepared us thirty minutes in advance for two inches of snow that fell overnight.

Of course I know that storms and weather systems can shift at the last minute, but really? They didn’t see 2-5 inches coming until half an hour before it fell? They weren’t even calling for rain or sleet or anything wet and then – boom! – there it was. Snow all over our driveway and ground and me having to wake up a teenager who stayed up all night and tell him that his dad has to go to pick up things for a fundraiser for a community organization he’s part of so now said groggy teenager needs to wake up and shovel the driveway.

I’ll also have to go out in this snow later to return my dad’s car to him. He switched his car for his truck, which we have been borrowing because The Husband’s truck has been in the shop for two weeks getting a lot of very expensive work done on it. Dad needed his truck to take recycling downtown. Had I known this earlier than five minutes before he headed our way, I could have driven the truck to him and he could have brought me back home after we delivered the recycling. Dad seems to be like the forecasters these days with his last minute announcements.

Our car isn’t in very good shape either after hitting a deer in late October. The front headlight was damaged and the insurance didn’t want to pay for it but finally did and we ordered a replacement headlight assembly but it came broken so we had to ship it back and now we have to order a new one so my dad and son can replace it and hopefully save us another mechanic’s bill. We will see how that goes.

A drying rack is sitting on the landing at the top of my stairs right now because our dryer finally died and our neighbor offered us the drying rack until we get it fixed. Between working two jobs The Husband has been taking the wet laundry to the laundry mat because I’m too much of a wimp to lift a laundry basket full of wet laundry and carry it to and from the car.

I’ve been thinking a lot these past two weeks about that saying, “When it rains it pours” because it has certainly been raining and pouring here lately, which reminds me that last spring our ceiling leaked and we will probably have to have that looked at again in a couple of months.

Now all of these woes may sound depressing to some of you, but for me, it’s just life because mixed in with the woes have been some good too. A surprise and very appreciated gift of money last week helped us pay off our heating bill last week right before we needed another order (which will mean another bill, but it’s much less this time, thankfully).

My mom has been dealing with severe pain from fibromyalgia for a few weeks now but Thursday I found her CBD stick and we rubbed it on and it actually took the edge off. I’m not done with it yet but I have made quite a bit of progress on the book I am releasing in August as part of a series with a group of other authors.

So there has been some good mixed in with the bad.

Going back to our unexpected snow, I am pretty sure we Pennsylvania residents are no longer surprised when we go to bed with no snow and wake up with two, three, four, or even five inches of it all over the trees and ground and our cars. Throwing open the curtains is literally like opening a mystery box because you just never know what you are going to get. I can tell you that life is never dull in a state where the weather might be sunny and warm enough to wear short sleeves one day and cold, snowy, and wet, requiring winter coats, gloves, and hats the next.

Even my cats are anxious these days about going outside. They no longer dart out onto the back porch ready to start their exploring for the day. Instead they timidly stand in the doorway and move their heads back and forth while their eyes scan the outside world to see what elements they might have to deal with that day and whether or not they want to deal with the elements they see.

Some mornings they simply swish a tail and turn themselves right back around to head back into the house. They find a spot on a chair or a bed to curl up in and sleep the day away, hoping when they wake up it will be sunny and pleasant again and they can lay on their backs and let the sun warm their bellies.

Looking at the weather forecast for the next week, I don’t think that is going to be happening for a while so they might as well take their 18^th nap of the day.

It’s probably safer inside anyhow.

No foxes to climb up poles and fences and eat them inside.

How was your week? Let me know in the comments.