Snow in Texas

Because it was so late in the year we decided that our vacation destination should be somewhere around New Mexico. We were traveling by camper and figured that, because of the warmer climate, the campgrounds there would probably still be open late in October. I didn't bring my laptop and was only occasionally able to get online, but when I did I checked the weather back home, expecting to be able to gloat about how much better the weather was in whatever state I happened to be in at the moment.

The temperature at home stayed around sixty the whole time we were gone.

And when we got to Texas it snowed.

In the camper I sleep on a shelf above the cab. It has a window and a light and a curtain, but there're only about two feet of room between the ceiling and the floor, so it's basically a glorified shelf. There isn't room it sit up, so I do literally roll out of bed in the mornings, and the space is nearly impossible to heat in the winter or cool in the summer. So when it snowed on us in Texas, I elected to trade in the privacy of having a curtain for a lack of frostbite and sleep on the couch.

Poodleface has always slept by himself. At home he has a kennel he gets into at bedtime or whenever we're in my room and he thinks I'm being boring. When visiting relatives or staying in hotels he sleeps in a collapsible kennel, slightly smaller than his one at home and resembling a rectangular tent. In the camper he sleeps on the sofa. So, for the first time in almost four years, I slept with my dog.

It went better than expected. We kicked each other for the first few minutes until we'd both found a comfortable position, and then we slept until morning. I woke up with warm feet and no frostbite, and I lifted the curtain to see a beautiful winter wonderland with snow hanging heavily off the trees and sparkling on the ground, which was really quite beautiful until I remembered we were in Texas. Then it was just weird.