Snow schnoz blog.

I was wrong again about the snow that fell the other day. It stuck, but has been slowing melting since, forming ice hazards in a lot of places. It’s December, but it still feels too early for that kind of thing, somehow.

During the Thanksgiving Eve snow, Lilly built the requisite snowman, a small figure on top of our cast-iron patio table, whose umbrella and chairs were stowed in the garage some time ago, leaving it to sit out the winter solo. Lilly’s pretty good at rolling the snowman parts, better that I would be if I ever did it, but maybe that’s a consequence of being born in the North. Her snowman design, however, reflects her Japanese half, in that it consists of a body and a head -- two parts, rather than the body, thorax and head that are standard issue for North American snowfolk.

I don’t think I actually saw any snowmen in Japan, because Osaka approximates Houston’s climate, but I did see them depicted in artwork: always two parts.

I also don’t think I’ve ever seen a snowman with coal for eyes and mouth, or a carrot for a nose, here or in Japan. That, like a hobo’s stick & bag, seems more like an ossified artists’ depiction than a real design plan. We used raisins for the eyes, but they were hard to imbed properly, so we skipped the mouth. She inserted a small stick for a nose, looking like an impaling accident at first, and used a small aluminum pie pan for a hat. By the next morning, more snow had fallen, and had covered the nose-stick so that the snowman had a real Jimmy Durante of a schnoz.