All posts tagged: Buffalo winter

Aggressive boot issues

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Yeah ok, so yesterday I saw my snow boots propitiating to who knows what and this morning there was snow on the ground. I’m not saying cause and effect exactly, but one second your Joan of Arctic Sorels are sacrificing to something and the next morning you are out there with the Evil Snow Shovel? More than a coincidence. The lesson here, at least the lesson here at the WideEyedDomicile, is that you don’t get the boots out before the snow comes. The big furry pac boots live on the boot tray next to the ice grabbers and the Rieker-cold-but-not-bad boots. They’ve been waiting there, not-so-patiently since I extracted them from the back of the hall closet in November. Evidently they felt unappreciated, bored. I don’t know, what do dusty unused snow boots feel like when the weather isn’t snowy? You tell me. Whatever, their plan worked. Today the Joan of Arctics tromped me on dog walks, around campus, to the store, and clumped around on the Smooth Ride’s gas pedal. They insisted that we …

Taller fencing.

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When my neighbor’s daughter giggled at me, I thought to consider our situation. All I did was flap my hello-hand at her when she got into her dad’s car less than 10 feet away from me and Miss Tibbit – who was taking an eternally long sniff at something along the fence line. She found half a sandwich there about a month ago and she can’t let the memory go. Miss Tibbit found the sandwich, not the daughter. The origin of the half a sandwich remains unknown. It was 10pm walkies and the entire WideEyedHousehold was outside, except Ancient Wiggins the Cat who could be heard yowling for a snack in the kitchen. I waved my hello-hand and the daughter said hi but she said it through a sort of shocked-involuntary giggle. Weird. I pushed the side flap of my furry bomber hat out of the way and looked around a bit to see what was funny. The dogs weren’t up to anything. The WideEyedSpouse was…oh. The WideEyedSpouse was standing in the driveway in his …

You can’t drink the ocean.

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Hamish the Corgi, Miss Tibbit the Useless Little Black Dog, and I piled into my parent’s old Chevy truck. I opened the passenger window just enough for Tibbit’s head and shoulders and so that Hamish could get his nose into the air. Any more than that and Miss Tibbit would shove her entire body out of the window and air surf her way to the beach. As it was her ears flapped in the rainy wind of Upper Township while we cruised through the marshes and neighborhoods on the way to the beach. The WideEyedHousehold was on a mini-break to the shore – and while the WideEyedSpouse wasted his time inland, meeting with a friend and talking about cars, moto-cross, and computers, the dogs and I hit the beach. We walked for a few miles but in the dense fog we couldn’t tell. Our feet were moving but the scenery didn’t change. Gulls flapped at Hamish when he ran in looping arcs around them. He was bound to be frustrated in his corgi heart, no one …

Spring on my bookshelf if not on the ground.

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Outside it is snowing. I can’t stand it. Miss Tibbit can’t stand it. My mouse keeps clicking on garden websites. I pretend ordered over $500 worth of dry, sunny condition plants yesterday. I bought tulips in an act of desperation. They are keeping me company in the office, nestled among the things I look at everyday…my dried frog from a beach cliff road in Estramadura region, Portugal. A favorite rock from the Rat Islands. Binoculars for staring down squirrels at the bird feeder. Beethoven on the radio because the Beethoven Festival is this week in Buffalo and that’s what’s playing. Grandpa WideEyed’s Perfect Attendance Certificate 1915-1916. My dented clock. Which would not be dented if it chose to stay on the wall like a normal clock. And, from my salad days – a Certificate of Award for participating in the Middle School jog-a-thon in 1981. I jogged 6.9 kilometers – I jogged in KILOMETERS you’ll note because the school system was still pretending to the metric conversion back then. Spring tulips among my everyday things. They are making …

The meatballs are in the crockpot.

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The outside world was a rude -6°F this morning. The dogs wasted no time out there during morning walkies. They failed utterly to enjoy the hard, crystal blue sky and sparkling snow. Fair enough. I am appreciating it from my office window. Death dealing icicles are dangling from every house for blocks. One neighbor has glaciers forming in the deep vee swales of his roofline, the forward ends are ten-foot long broadswords aiming for earth. Or his car. Because he parks under them. The snow squeaks under feet and tires. The ground isn’t the ground anymore. We’ve all given up trying to clear sidewalks and driveways entirely – we’ve taken to forming a smooth surface of the trampled up, super frozen mass. My boots thunk on these elevated walkways. Miss Tibbit-The-Useless-Little-Black-Dog pees on them and it all disappears. She can’t be the only one. Melting day is going to be awesomely gross. Bleach down the neighborhood gross. In desperation I applied Swarovski Crystal tattoos this morning. They are tiny, wee crystals on adhesive. Now my cheek …

Hamish the Corgi, Almost a Person

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Hamish the Corgi is almost a person. He has plans. He has dignity. He is hampered in life only by his tiny, T. Rex front legs and his lack of thumbs. Sometimes while he watches me analyze data and write I just know he gets it. And if he could speak in my language he would engage in discourse. But then. A bug wanders past. It is happening right now. I can see him trying to ignore it but first his eyes, then his ears flickered in the direction of the bug. It’s one of those triangular bodied bugs, the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug, that show up in the winter sometimes.  Hamish can’t resist a good stink bug. He is sprawled on the floor, holding the stink bug cupped in his meaty little paws. Oops, it just “escaped” and he had to pounce a little to get it back in the dog paw corral. I guess that got boring and he just rolled onto his side and rubbed his face all over the bug. He …

The tiresome collision of skeletons and snow.

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Outside the lab window, above the human skeletons dangling from their cranial hooks, I could see the wind howling snow across the small Fimbulwintered quad. It looked horrible. I put my chin in my hand and gazed into the whirling wretched iciness and thought about a beach. A long, wide beach with nice medium sized waves and only a few other people around. The sun glared off the water and I could almost feel the heat. I sighed and imagined settling my shoulders deeper into the hot sand. It was great. I smiled. I heard a faint, wah, wah, wah sound off to my right so I turned my head, idly wondering what it was. Oh. It was one of the grad students in the lab. He was describing his research project to me. To get my input. Which I really wanted to give because I like that part of my job. I tuned back in, sighing to myself. I’m tired of winter. Temperature at posting: 16 degrees F, light snow, wind ~15mph.