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!!!!

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

Oh NO! More SNOW!

Another snowstorm!!!! I completely understand why older people move to southern states when they retire. Winters are COLD!  My fingers get chilled just thinking about it, and the snow keeps piling up!

I do not enjoy the winters as I used to.  I remember pre-children when my husband and I would go skiing.  One day it was 10 degrees below zero. We were all excited it was so cold because that meant that the ski slopes would not be as crowded and we would not have to wait in line for the chairlift.  We bundled up with layer upon layer of warm clothing with not an inch of skin showing lest if freeze and fall off. We skied all day.  At one point, we stopped at the top of the mountain and viewed the surrounding area.  With the sun blazing down on the shiny snow, we saw snowcapped mountains in the distance, little villages, frozen lakes and the ant specks that were cars, and I was overcome with awe for nature.  It’s a good thing this memory is frozen in my mind because these days, you’d never get me on top of a cold, frigid mountain again!

Several years ago, after several major snowstorms, there was an 8 foot pile of snow made by the snowplow. The kids managed to shape it for sledding, and they had great fun sliding down.  At one point, Steven climbed to the top of the pile and all of a sudden he disappeared!  He had fallen deep inside the snow pile! It was like he was buried in an avalanche! Another heart stopping moment for me.  Fortunately, we managed to pull the snow from around the top of the pile until we could pull him out.  He was laughing because it was such an adventure, and he begged to do it again.

Several years ago, my husband received an old snowmobile as a “gift” from a friend.  One day, he was riding it in our large backyard with my son Steven sitting in the front of him.  Raymond decided to Steven drive.  Excitedly, Steven turned the handlebars to give it gas.  The snowmobile took off in a lurch and my husband was thrown from the back of it in an amazing double somersault. (A “10” if he were rated in the Olympics for gymnastics off the back of a snowmobile.)  Steven and the snowmobile zoomed on, headed right for the shed in the backyard.  His life flashed before my eyes and I thought “This is what it feels like to see your child die.”   My heart was in my stomach and I felt like I wanted to vomit and scream at the same time. Fortunately, unbeknownst to me, if you let up on the handlebars, the machine stops. This is exactly what Steven did. Then he turned around and noticed that his father was missing! And he had stopped within a foot of the shed. He did not realize how serious it was, and laughed at my husband, still feet up in the snow. It took a while for my heart to start beating again, and I vowed Steven would never again be allowed to drive a snowmobile.  So, my husband did the only smart thing a father could do…he sold that snowmobile and he bought 2 news ones so we could go snowmobiling as a family!  Ugh! We trekked up to New Hampshire to go for a nice, winter vacation. Because Steven could not drive, and because at this time Angel was also living with us, I was forced to go along as the second driver.  If you have not ridden on a snowmobile, the closest description is as if you are riding motorcycle on skis.  In the ice.  And the cold. And did I mention the ice? Because I had never even ridden a motorcycle, I was very nervous. I started the machine, jerking it as Steven had done when he tried to drive it. Fortunately, Angel had his arms firmly wound around me and he didn’t fall off.  I was so scared and it was so awkward to drive that I could only creep along at 5-10 miles per hour, much to my husband’s dismay. (Dismay is putting it mildly.) To make matters worse, my husband did not choose the nice, empty, safe fields to ride in.  NOOOOOO!  He chose the skinny, trees whipping by your head, narrow snowmobile paths with TRAFFIC COMING IN THE OTHER DIRECTION!  That one day of snowmobiling was the scariest of my life.  Once we began on the trail, there was no turning back!  My hands were shaking, my body was sweating even though it was freezing out, and my imagination had my head being whipped off by a tree branch.  I did enjoy the nice, friendly wave the snowmobilers in the opposite direction were giving us, and each time we passed them, my hand went up to wave back.  (I later learned that the opposing snowmobilers put up the number of fingers for the number in their party.  3 fingers for 3 people, and so forth.  I realized that each time I waved, I was telling them that we had 5 people in our party.  Oh, well, I won’t do that again because I won’t do THAT again…go snowmobiling.  Fortunately, Angel did not enjoy it either, so he and I spent our time shopping at the factory outlets while Raymond and Steven went out on the trails.

At home, there is a pond in our backyard.  Marie loves playing outside in the cold, going ice fishing, building snowmen, and, most of all, playing hockey.  She dresses warmly from head to toe…black snow pants, black jacket, a hat which covers most of her face, several pairs of gloves topped with hockey gloves, and boys hockey skates.  She takes her hockey stick and skates around the lake to the various hockey games trying to get an invitation to play.  From looking at her all bundled up, you cannot tell if she is a girl or a boy.  She is not verbal, so they cannot tell from her voice.  (She points to her ears for them to know she is deaf.)  She would normally use sign language but with hockey gloves this is next to impossible.  They always let her in because she is a good player.  If one group stops playing, she will skate around and find another group.  She reminds me of a female Batman for hockey…slinking into games, her identity unknown…showing up out of the blue when a team needs a player!

Winter is alive and well with my kiddos, who enjoy it as I did when I was a child.  They love the snow and all the activities, but now thatI am older I get chilled easily…(picture granny in the rocking chair with a blanket around her.)  I sit by the picture window, near the fireplace, drinking hot chocolate with mountains of marshmallow and I watch them having fun outside.  As parents, we all know that watching our children be happy and have fun is even more fun than doing it ourselves. I am a happy mommy.  Let it snow!

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

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

Link to the Readers Digest review of my book:  http://www.rd.com/recommends/what-to-read-after-a-hurricane/