Oh, snowy day!

It is pretty to look at, though the thought of clearing the driveway puts it in perspective.

After spending the weekend "Thinking Spring" today's snow is tough to take in. 

I really like snow, and I certainly don't mind a day off, but I'm ready to open the windows and get my hands dirty in the garden.  Instead, I'm inside watching the white stuff fall and hoping for drier days.  I was hoping to share a cupcake recipe with you guys today, but I didn't take a photo of the finished product.  Whoops.  Guess I'll just have to make them again...

But since I can't get to the store today I was stuck with chores.  As I went downstairs to do laundry this morning, I was greeted by this new puddle that keeps forming at the bottom of the stairs whenever it rains.  It never happened until a couple weeks ago and it honestly took me a couple times to notice it was there.  I have a habit of tossing old kitchen towels down the basement steps whenever I get a new one out, since the laundry is down there, but then I started to notice sometimes when I picked them up they were wetter than when I tossed them down.  Not good. 

And this morning they were all soaked.  I could tell the wet wasn't coming from the wall where I suspected, but from "the door."

This (dirty) door may look innocent, but I agree with the toddler when she says it's creepy in there.

See, "the door" looks cute and all, but it creeps me out.  I just leads to a sump pit and the old bilco doors that are now under the deck, but I also imagine a family of mice and other creepy crawlies live in there so opening that door is pretty high up on my no list.  (We all know how I feel about mice. Eeek.)  But since I was the only "adult" home, the task fell on me.  I opened the door and saw that the sump pit runneth over.  Ugh.

With instructions from Jon to put in the backup sump pump, I took off the lid and realized that the float, the thing that essentially tells it to turn on and off, was stuck down so it wasn't pumping.  A quick prod with some leftover PVC and it was good as new.  Well, almost, since it appears one of the hoses is cracked and needs to be replaced.   But at least the water went down and there won't be any more puddles in the basement.

After all that it's time to think Spring again and start planning the garden!  One of these days the snow will stop, right?