I feel as if I'm living in a snow globe at times. I'm not saying that's entirely a bad thing, but if this winter is anything like the winter of 2010, we all may begin to feel that way before spring arrives next year. 

 Snow globes could be viewed as a microcosm of the world in which we live - gently falling snow lands continually on our surfaces. We scoop it and blow it and push it and plow it and haul it away. And it is an infinite cycle, or so it seems. 

The next thing you know, our world has been rattled by an unseen hand and down comes more of the white stuff. It's beautiful, I know, and mesmerizing. Transfixing at times.  It's all a part of life during time of year that lasts at best, for four months  and most often sidles into month five. 

 Winter.  

 And here we are, the tiny,  powerless people in that little globe, staring up into the sky wondering when it will once again fall on our heads.

Back when I was a youngster I was given a lovely little oval-shaped snow globe as a gift. Inside was a quaint two-story house and little tiny people standing outside in their yard. That snowglobe was a treasured possession of mine that has long since disappeared. 

 In school my kids fashioned homemade globes using recycled baby food jars and sparkling glitter flakes. I think that perhaps those are the most treasured globes I have ever owned. 

Snow globes have always been a fascination with me as I'm sure with many of you. My mom, in fact, is a collector of snowglobes. She has big ones and small ones and musical ones and plain, old fashioned ones.  She delights in stirring up a snowstorm now and then - it makes her feel a sense of empowerment I would imagine. 

One year my oldest sister, traveling from the east coast homeward to be with the family at Christmas time, carried with her a lovely snowglobe that she intended to give my mom as a gift for Christmas. 

 It was a typical Midwestern winter that year with the thermometer plummeting to the depths of despair and beyond. She made the trek home safely and we all reveled in the warmth and bliss that the fire in the hearth provided us.   

When it came time to present her gift to our mother, much to my sister's complete disappointment, the water in the globe had turned to ice. 

 She had packed her carefully wrapped Christmas gifts in the turn of her car, not realizing that the temperatures there would fall well below the freezing mark.   The snow fell no more in that particular little world ... and I suppose you might say it was more of an ice storm that they were experiencing. 

But you know it's cold when your snowglobe freezes.....

I can sadly say that I do not own a snowglobe at this juncture in my life but I sure would like to.  But then again, why should I need one when in fact we live in a great big snowglobe of shimmering, magical snowfall.....and as I write, someone has once again shaken our little world.  

 The snowflakes are drifting down like frosty granules in glycerine water.....here we go again.