It was a long, cold weekend.  

Friday afternoon, I roasted a butternut squash, some carrots, and an onion, intending to make butternut squash soup for dinner.  The roasted vegetables were on the chopping board, and a soup pot was heating up on the stove, when The Sister-in-Law called to see if we wanted to brave the snowy roads to go to the Mexican restaurant with them.  I turned off that stove so fast!

Except to scatter some bird food, I haven't set foot outside the house since then.  The birds provided us with a little entertainment.  We saw "the usuals" - cardinals, wrens, chickadees, the occasional woodpecker - and a few that we don't see often enough to name them.  Whole groups of little blackbirds swooshed in and out.  I watched a cardinal clamp a sunflower seed against a crape myrtle limb to hold it still while he cracked it open with his beak.  Come spring, I'm probably going to regret throwing those seeds so close to the flower beds.  

Friday afternoon, a bird burgled its way onto the back porch.  We searched the porch screens for holes, but didn't find any.  The screen doors don't fit precisely, but the cracks at their tops and bottoms seem too small for birds to squeeze through. No clue how it got in. We opened both screen doors to give it an escape route, but while the doors were open, a second bird - a female cardinal, I think - came in.  The Husband managed to catch the cardinal and let it out the door (it bit the sh*t out of his finger - you could see the V shape on his skin).  The other one eventually flew up in the rafters and would not come down.  We didn't want to leave the doors open indefinitely so this bird could get out for fear more birds would come in, so we closed the doors at dark.  The next morning when I opened the back door, TWO birds flew out of the rafters.   Over the weekend. we had several more birds find their way into the porch.  We need to figure out how they're getting in and plug the hole.  They go apesh*t trying to get out, and I'm scared they'll hurt themselves flying at the screens.  Not to mention what their beaks and claws do to the screens.  

I finished the butternut soup Saturday afternoon, and we had it for supper with grilled cheese sandwiches.  It was delicious.  We had it again last night, with chimichangas made from Friday night's Mexican leftovers.

There's still a good bit of snow in the back yard this morning.   Although the roads are fairly clear, I probably won't go anywhere today, either.  It's just too stinkin' cold.

I don't really have a plan for today.  

I have been dabbling with bookbinding.  So far, I've made two little sketchbooks and started a third, but they all have issues.  Instead of wasting any more paper trying to hone my skills, I think I'll cut the finished ones apart and re-use the materials.