wideeyedfunk

Tag: Buffalo winter

  • Aggressive boot issues

    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.

    image of snow boots
    Creepy pac boots lurking in the front parlor.

    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.

    image of three kinds of snow boots
    The line up. Note angry pac boots at the end.

    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 put the Smooth Ride into sport mode even though it was a little icy. “We can handle it,” they said but kept themselves out of the brake pedal area.

    I think my snow boots might be jerks. I’m not saying anything out loud to them though, because they control my warmth and comfort for the next three months. They also get to decide if I fall – unless I layer the ice grabbers on them. I don’t know what would happen then. The snow boots would probably get to thinking Buffalo snow isn’t challenging enough and hike us to something really cold. I’ll light them on fire first. Someone should tell them that.

  • Taller fencing.

    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 own (matching) bomber hat, blue yard coat, blue long underwear, and crocs. His glasses gleamed at me. He looked, well, interesting.

    I took stock of my own self. Fuzzy bomber hat, glasses, blue yard coat (matching), leggings with umbrellas printed all over them, crocs (matching).

    Sigh. You can’t buy that kind of style.

  • You can’t drink the ocean.

    You can’t drink the ocean.

    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 told the gulls that they were meant to be herded. Miss Tibbit sniffed a hermit crab carcass all over, she’ll know that carcass when she meets it again. I took deep breaths of the one hundred percent humid, salt air. It made the back of my neck tingle and I felt the positive energy to my toes. The Buffalo winter soot clogging my lungs eased a bit. My hair grew and grew into a witchy curling mass that reeked of ocean.

    Hamish sampled a tide pool. “Hack,” he said and looked at me. “You can’t drink the ocean,” I told him. “Haaaack,” he said. Miss Tibbit tip-toed on hind legs to see the giant yellow claw truck hauling metal drain tubes around on the beach. She barked at it. “Monster!” she yelled and hopped up and down. “Monster!” Hamish didn’t see what the fuss was all about.

    We clambered back into the truck and the dogs fought for prime positioning. Too bad they couldn’t decide which was prime position: window or shoved up against me. They aren’t used to riding up front on a bench seat – were we in a car or on the sofa? Time to rest or time to sniff? Confusing. Miss Tibbit ended up sitting next to me like a person without personal boundaries – pressed tight against my side and watching the road with me. I could feel her tilting her head left and right as I did to check for traffic at stop signs.

    Starving and thirsty, and not sure if these were my problems or the dogs were using mind control on me, I hit a Wawa convenience store for hot dogs and something to drink. My hot dog had ketchup and mustard, Hamish and Miss Tibbit shared a plain one, minus the roll. I poured water into the empty container. Hamish appreciated getting that nasty ocean taste out of his mouth. Miss Tibbit liked drinking hot dog flavored water. “The best water ever,” I could tell she was thinking.

    We drove home, ocean-blown, bellies full, content. Windshield wipers flapping against the pouring rain, dog eyes drooping heavily in the warmth of the truck.

  • Spring on my bookshelf if not on the ground.

    Spring on my bookshelf if not on the ground.

    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.

    Tulips

    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.

    Office Wall

    Spring tulips among my everyday things. They are making me smile.

    May you all have spring tulips today – in your hearts if not in actual fact.

  • The meatballs are in the crockpot.

    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.

    SnowYard

    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.

    CrystalsIn desperation I applied Swarovski Crystal tattoos this morning. They are tiny, wee crystals on adhesive. Now my cheek bones sparkle like the snow. I figure that if I disguise myself as a Snow Sprite I’ll be warmer. I won’t mind the frigid temperatures, shocking winds, and massive banks of snow. Two years of this nonsense ran the WideEyedHousehold out of Minnesota a few years ago.

    In further desperation I made meatballs in marinara sauce. A warm, meaty, herbal aroma ought to make us feel secure, warm, and content in these horrible depths of winter. They are in the crockpot now. Sure enough, their happy scent is wafting up from the kitchen. Later the Spouse and I will run out for crusty rolls and provolone cheese. Of course, we are also going to pick up snowshoe gaiters because we are going out into the cold for a hike tomorrow. Probably I should apply more Snow Sprite crystals and eat lots of meatballs in preparation.

  • Hamish the Corgi, Almost a Person

    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 is laying there, all corgi limp, and I figure that he likes the feeling of the stink bug wiggling between his cheek and the wood floor.

    As we sit here in the office, me with my article draft and data tables, Hamish with his Marmorated Stink Bug, I begin to wonder about Hamish’s plans, dignity, and potential. It just is not easy to look intellectually engaged when you are laying on your side, pressing a stink bug into the floor with your cheek and a crazy look in your eyes. Try it, you’ll see.

    The stink bug made it from the wood floor to the carpet (probably an epic-heroic journey through corgi whiskers and fur) and I thought I might intervene and toss the little bug out the window before its stink got rubbed into the rug. Hamish sat up and glared at me when I leaned forward from my chair. Okaaaay. I sat back.

    So here we are. Détente.

    I will give Hamish a moment to resolve the situation on his own.

    He is holding Stink Bug in his paw corral again. Thinking.

    He just leaned in to nose around in the paw corral. His mouth opened a little and, oh man, he did it, that bug is Gone. Down the gullet after some dramatic lip curled chewing.

    And there we have it. Hamish is not, in fact, a person.

  • The tiresome collision of skeletons and snow.

    Skeleton1Outside 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.