That dot on the right is Fiona trying to find a patch of grass…
All work and no play makes Mare a dull girl. All work and no play makes Mare a dull girl. All work and no play makes Mare a dull girl. All work and no play makes Mare a dull girl. All work and no play makes Mare a dull girl. All work and no play makes Mare a dull girl. All work and no play makes Mare a dull girl. All work and no play makes Mare a dull girl. All work and no play makes Mare a dull girl. All work and no play makes Mare a dull girl. All work and no play makes Mare a dull girl. All work and no play makes Mare a dull girl. All work and no play makes Mare a dull girl. All work and no play makes Mare a dull girl. All work and no play makes Mare a dull girl. All work and no play makes Mare a dull girl. All work and no play makes Mare a dull girl. All work and no play makes Mare a dull girl. All work and no play makes Mare a dull girl…
Great teeth…
I’m just kidding, but I do have an axe…
And a fur coat – don’t tell PETA…
I’m snowed in. Not the pretty, gossamer, get-out-of-work, plowed main roads kind of snowed in, but the Overlook Hotel, black ice, chase your spouse with an axe, see scary-twins-with-blue-bows in the hallway kind of snowed in…
I know, you’re like “What’s the big deal, I have more snow than THAT,” but you have plowed main roads and you can GET OUT, right?
Yesterday, I spent 40 minutes removing a hundred pounds of wet snow from my car with a broom, and doing a test run from the top tier of the driveway to the second tier garage level: a drop of about ten feet. I fish tailed (under a couple feet of snow there was ice), slid and the little light that shows a cartoon car tipping sideways lit up. My car acted like a plow, creating a wall of wet snow where I wanted to drive. I parked on the garage level and crawled up the hill to the front door.
I want to get out of here because Lauren has the flu and she wants me to make her my restorative mashed potatoes and put my perpetually cold hands on her hot forehead (a panacea that has made her feel better for more than 20 years…).
In the old drinking days I would have thought, “Lauren needs me!”, loaded the car with my suitcase (packed) and Fiona (who hasn’t pooped in 3 days) and just driven into the white, without regard for what might happen. I would have worn the wrong shoes and forgotten my gloves…
These days, I stood on the porch and remembered I’d read somewhere, that if you get stuck in deep snow and keep the car running to stay warm, you DIE from carbon-monoxide poisoning. Worse, I’d have to put on all my clothes and carry 50 pounds of condo-dog to safety. I might lose toes.
I called neighbor Betsy and asked her if she thought I could get out. She just laughed and said something about skating rinks and ending up in “the drink” (I think she meant the creek at the bottom of the gully, not that I might fall off the wagon – I don’t think she even knows…). I called neighbor Bob who also laughed and invited me for dinner. He said something about Cornish game hens and crescent rolls…
Which got me thinking about my food supply. I’m not hungry, but when you know you can’t go to the store, two cans of cream of mushroom soup, a tin of spicy Virginia peanuts and a few boxes of dreaded carbs (barley, wheat pasta, brown rice) do not a pantry make. My freezer contains the remains from the holiday: ham, bacon and processed turkey burgers. I will be the only person on earth, who gains weight, stranded on a mountaintop…
If worse comes to worse, and I need whole foods, I can always maraud. I’ve become quite handy with the hatchet… Desperate times call for desperate measures…
And there’s always Fiona…
