Snow and Soap Operas

 

 

We have had some frigid weeks, colder than I ever remember. The recent storm buried my car in snow, and eventually a five-foot snow pile lurked behind it. I had learned about “displacement” in science, and usually related it to “if I jumped into a small pool, the water level would rise.” In this instance, each time the snowplow came by, the snow from its big shovel displaced to create a mountain behind my car. Bully snowplows!

Many a time after other snowstorms, I had put on my snow boots and been able to traverse my walkway even if it wasn’t shoveled. It had been a fun challenge, pulling each leg up, out and forward as though walking through fluffy cotton candy. No such luck after this storm! Opening the front door, I tried to step out into the snow, but the cold was debilitating, freezing me in place like Elsa froze her sister in the movie “Frozen”. Hurriedly getting back inside, I vowed to stay housebound until the spring.

Trying to keep the house warm enough was the real test, and our old boiler chugged along continuously to provide a temperature high enough for the pipes not to freeze, but low enough that a second mortgage on the house wouldn’t be necessary to pay the bill. I bundled up in regular clothes, throwing on a bathrobe and slippers for added warmth. The lower household temperature, however, froze the butter I leave on the kitchen counter so it will be soft enough to smooth on my raisin toast. The mornings after the storm found me ripping my toast as I tried to butter each piece, huge lumps of unhealthy butter just sitting there without any chance of smoothing out. Alas, it was the final snowstorm humiliation!

Normally, I like snow when the temperature is reasonable. As a child, I loved to sled and make snowballs. Last month when shopping at Ocean State Job Lot, I found the ultimate, much needed, snow accessory; a box like plastic container with the shape of 6 snowballs inside. Apparently, the eye hand coordination of children these days is so poor that a tool is needed to make snowballs. They no longer have to maneuver their hands to form the balls, but just need to shove snow into the container, shut it, and perfect snowballs would be the result. One would have to assume that such ammunition would far surpass the handmade balls that might fall apart in mid-air were they not so cleverly created.

A gift I received for Christmas has managed to maintain my sanity while housebound. Where I would normally sit and watch television while sipping on tea that gradually cools, (a real problem for me, who only likes tea at a certain temperature,) Hubby bought me a device that keeps the tea at whatever temperature I want. Really! So it was, with contentment, that I braved the cold, bundled up in a velour blanket on a Lazy Boy, sipping my hot cup of tea and watching the real life soap operas. No, not the Housewives of Atlanta or Sister Wives, but the news channels that continue to entertain me with the twists and turns in politics.

 

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I Drive Like a Horse in Central Park

This winter weather is not letting up!! Temperature this morning was 12 degrees. Snow is still piled waist high everywhere, blocking views and sidewalks. The wind was still blowing, building snow piles in unexpected places. Cold, cold, cold. It is under these conditions that I drive to work.

Sitting in the car, sheltered from the cold and wind, I drive to work down the main street. Therein lies my problem. All along the street are bus stops. Because the snow precludes standing on the actual bus stop on the sidewalk, the bus travelers have to stand on the side of the road getting sideswiped by cars.

The first person I run across is obviously just leaving her job from McDonalds. She looks very tired and she probably worked the overnight shift. She is carrying a cup of coffee in her gloved hand. In the frigid weather, she also wears a hat and scarf, and big boots for the snow, but she must be cold none-the-less. My heart goes out to her. My instinct is to stop and offer her a ride, but I’ve driven by with the traffic and she becomes a distant memory in my rear view mirror.

The second person is a young adult, wearing only a hoodie pulled up over his head. His hands are stuffed in his pocket, and he looks verrrrrry cold. He looks so miserable, I want to just pick him up and hug him warm.

The third person I see is an older gentleman, body hunched over to minimize the cold. He wears a hat with ear muffs, scarf around the neck, heavy gloves and an old workman’s coat. He looks very uncomfortable. “Please, step into my warm car”, I want to say to him, but I don’t. Passing these first few people, I picture myself stopping and picking them all up, stuffing my car like a clown car in a circus. Alas, I do not do so.

What I do is to begin to drive like I have blinders on. I drive in the left hand lane and look straight ahead, not paying attention to the side of the road. I do not see the bus travelers who break my heart as I am driving. I drive like a carriage horse in Central Park, blinders on, concentrating on straight ahead, not getting distracted by view in the periphery.

However, I do not feel comfortable driving with blinders on…

They TOLD Me Not To Do It…

Anyone who knows me knows that I am not one to generally break the rules. However, it snowed AGAIN last night!! (UGH!!!) About 10 inches!!! And I had a meeting to get to! Out the front door I slogged to my snow covered car. I cleaned off the windshield in order to see out of it, and rolled down the windows to clear off the snow on them. (Sure, the snow fell into the car, but at least the windows were clear.) Off I went to my meeting. There I was, putzing along on the main street, congratulating myself on getting the car ready so fast, (because being late to a meeting is a serious offense.) Singing along to the radio with gusto, (LITE 105), I looked around at all of the other cars so carefully brushed off. SUCKERS! I’ll bet I did MY car in 1/10 of the time it took them to do theirs!

As I so carefully pulled into the snow covered parking spot and stepped on the brakes, a loud sound was heard overhead. Kind of like an avalanche sound. Loud, echoing, freaky. All of the snow that had been on TOP of my car, warmed by the heat inside, now slid freely down onto the windshield, completing engulfing me in a white out. It scared me for a moment when I thought that this could have easily happened stopping at a red light. But I was gleefully overwhelmed by the fact that I had made it to the meeting on time!! Yay!!!! Except for the fact that when I went into the meeting to join the others and there WERE no others…the meeting had been cancelled due to snow! AGAIN!!!!

I’ll Stay Inside Til Spring

Looked out the window today and all I saw was snow. Literally, the entire window was covered with snow, which reached up to the roof. Due to the high winds that blew the light and fluffy stuff across the small lake on which we live, our house window resembled the inside of a freezer. This actually kept the outside of our house “warm” at 32 degrees, compared the the howling wind outside at negative 15 degrees!

The saving grace is that the snow outside the front door is much lower at about 4 feet. Because one of my sons has consistently shoveled the walkway throughout these snowstorms, only about a foot of fresh snow covered the walkway. That’s the type of snow I hop through like a bunny. Jump, jump, jump with the longest strides I can muster, over to my car. Ready to go for the day! BRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!

Wish I was Punxsutawney Phil who could burrow down into my warm home, emerging in the spring!

Wherefore Art Thou Spring?

My birthday usually ushers in the springtime. This year, it ushered in yet another snow storm. The picture above is what our little cabin in New Hampshire looked like when we arrived for a weekend visit Saturday, (MARCH 22!) There was so much snow that we spent almost 2 hours shoveling to get into the house. My adventuresome self wanted to just dig a tunnel through the snow, and crawl out the other side, but hubby thought it might be difficult to drag the suitcases through. Besides, he reasoned, it is good EXERCISE to shovel. (Yeah, right, like I’d go along with him on that one…)
Not since years ago when “I was a wee lass who had to crawl through four feet of snow for a mile in order to get to school” have I seen this much snow. It seems as though Global Warming passed us by this winter. I worry about the wild animals; with the snow so deep, how can they walk anywhere, let alone find something to eat? I can only hope that they have all joined their bear colleagues and started the new tradition of hibernating.
Of course, the weather will soon warm and the snow will melt, (hopefully not flooding the place.) Until then, I will reluctantly wait, looking like this:

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To read more about my interesting, amazing childhood, please read my book. Here is a link:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-apple-tree/id538572206?mt=11

The Apple Tree: Raising 5 Kids With Disabilities and Remaining Sane

The Dance of the Snake Goddesses

I apologize for repeating this post from 2011, but it is on of my favorites, and a memory that is brought to mind on those few occasions that i have to go to court for my children and I see this particular lawyer there…

A very conservative lawyer friend had a very conservative lawyer wife who had taken up belly dancing.  She and 2 friends were so skilled in this talent that they were chosen to be performers for a large audience for First Night, the annual New Year’s Eve celebration in the city.  For an added “twist” to their act, my lawyer friend asked if his wife could borrow one of my son’s 5 foot long boa constrictors for their dance.  I had plenty of reservations, but I said okay. (It is always good to keep a lawyer friend happy because you never know when you will need a lawyer’s help.)  The ladies came to our house, and practiced with the snake while my son, Steven, who is very familiar with snakes, supervised.  The practice went very well, and the ladies excitedly decided to bill their act as the “The Dance of the Snake Goddesses.”

Well, New Year’s Eve came and I reminded Steven that we had to take the snake to the performance hall for the act.  Steven, who has Asperger’s and an anxiety disorder, was mortified!  There was no way HE was going to go to a large hall where there were a lot of people!  He handed me a pillowcase to put the snake in, and a bottle of alcohol “in case it bit someone”. He promptly took off on his bike peddling away to destinations unknown to me, (but far away from  First Night appearance.)  I started to panic!  These excited dancers were billed as the “The Dance of the Snake Goddesses” and they would have no snake!  Feeling extremely obligated to provide them with a snake, I decided to bring the it myself.  I had not minded the snakes when they were locked in the glass tanks, but somehow I was going to have to get up the nerve to actually take the snake out and put it in the pillowcase.  My hands were shaking as I undid the lock and took the cover off of the tank.   It looked docile enough, just lying there.  I reached in and managed to push it into the pillowcase using a long sleeved pot holder, proud of myself for not having to touch it.  Maybe I’d be okay! I tentatively carried the pillowcase to the living room, but I had miscalculated by not securing the top of it.  The snake’s head popped out, I pushed it back down.  It popped out again, and I pushed it down again.  This time it was stronger and its head came our farther.  When I tried to push it back in, it wiggle away from me and the whole snake came slithering out of the bag, which I promptly dropped.  There, on the floor of our living room, was a slithering 5 foot long snake!  I screamed.  My husband came to see what was going on, and he jumped up on the couch and screamed.  Even though I was shaking and my first instinct was to smash the thing over the head with a broom, I remembered  my commitment to our lawyer friends.  I gathered up my courage and, using the broom gently, I nudged it back into the pillowcase, this time immediately tying the top into a knot.

I was still shaking from this experience as I drove to the city with the wriggling pillowcase on the seat next to me.  I was feeling tremendous relief that I had at least caught it and was on my way to the performance. I even felt a little sorry for it, and turned the heat all the way up in my car so it could be warm.  (It had started to snow outside, which would mean there would be a larger than usual audience for an inside performance as the outside First Night performances would involved standing around in wet snow.  Great!  A bigger audience for what was sure to be a Snake Goddess fiasco!)

When we got near the theater, I put the pillowcase inside my coat to keep it warm. (MY I was brave!)  There was a line around the building waiting to see the performance.  I went to the head of the line, and quietly said to the guard at the door, “I have the snake for the performance.”  In his loudest voice, he parted the crowd by saying “Make way for the snake handler.  Make way for the snake handler!”  I wanted to hide!  As a 55 year old shaking, nervous, dowdy woman, I no more resembled a snake handler than a chipmunk would resemble Santa Clause.

I managed to get back stage with the snake and the belly dancers were very excited.  They carefully took him (her?  I couldn’t tell the difference,) out of the bag and began to practice.  By now I was shaking so badly that my stomach was in knots.  I was holding the bottle of alcohol (“in case it bit someone”.)  I was on the verge of tears, both from relief that I’d delivered the snake in one piece, but also fear that it would bite and there would be blood and screams and lawsuits.

The audience in the large theater was packed, standing room only.  The music for the dancers began.  They dramatically began the act hidden behind veils, with the snake on one woman with the head at one hand, draped across her back, and the tail on the other hand.  They did a dramatic dance, dropping the veils at different intervals for the audience to get a glimpse of the snake.  I could hear  “ooooh”  and “aaaaaah” from the audience.  I was hoping the snake wasn’t going to slither down and into the audience causing mass panic,  emptying the audience out into the street, or, worse yet, go around biting audience members with me following along with my bottle of alcohol. (Then I’d really need a lawyer for the lawsuits!)

Then something strange happened. The dancers dropped their veils, and the snake actually seemed to join in the dance.  Soon its head was wriggling in time to the music, its tail was swaying around, and it seemed to be having a grand old time!  It began to slither in time to the music (a pure coincidence I’m sure,) from one dancer to the next.  It was an amazing sight, the graceful gyrating dancers and the graceful gyrating snake, all moving in time to the music.  Mesmerizing. Amazing.  The act finished to a standing ovation, and darn it if it didn’t seem as though the snake bowed his head in response to the clapping from the audience.

After the show, the dancers gave the snake a few affectionate pats and back into the pillowcase it went.  I tied it in a knot, put it under my coat, and carried it back to the car.  I felt as though I was going to cry, but this time it was tears of relief.  I don’t know how I get myself into these situations, but, again, I’d come through it unscathed, with a little more respect for the reptile in the pillowcase next to me!