Weekend before this past, when temperatures were setting new record highs, and the last of the large snowdrift by the driveway had melted away, I got a little step ahead in the annual spring chores.

I put the power cords for plugging in the engine block heaters of the vehicles away.

An accomplishment that went unnoticed by the wife for the entire week. Until she got home from work today, having braved the highway of quickly freezing slush and bitter cold north, arctic winds, and tried to plug in the SUV.

Only to find the power cord missing from the small aspen.

So you can guess what I was doing a few hours ago, in that same bitter cold, north arctic wind. With the several inches of fresh snow on the ground.

Yep, the power cords are back out. And the wife has expressed her disdain at my being so foolish as to store any winter equipment away before May, much less April.

Now that the vehicles are getting their innards kept nice and warm and toasty, I need to decide what to do with the guest here on my desk, staring at me over the keyboard.

The cobweb spider delivered by a young girl and boy this afternoon, from the town's recreation center. Inside a clear M&Ms holiday bell container. The spider the rec manager was certain was a brown recluse.

It isn't.

Not sure what species it is yet, and I'm unnerved by the distorted silhouette it shares with its cousin, the black widow. But no red hourglass on this critter. If it were any kind of spring weather out there, I'd throw it in the garden and be done with it. But that would be a death sentence right now.

So, I stare at the spider, who has given up on climbing the walls of its cage and it, I assume, stares back.

Earlier this month the wife realized we had completely forgotten the heeler sisters' birthday. So we held off celebrating until today, the 17th of March. For reasons that are obvious to us.

And what celebrations do our red heelers get on the date of their birth, you might ask?

Two double cheeseburgers, plain.

Each.

Along with their regular dinners. Their mother and the masked heeler are coping just fine, although a little sleepy and thirsty. The little maskless heeler, though, is in some difficulty. Her belly is swollen, and when I left, she was having trouble getting comfortable on the bed.

If we knew how to give Tums to a heeler, we would.