All posts tagged: surviving winter

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 …

Filtering winter.

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I have dogs. I have work. Sometimes the WideEyedHousehold needs staples like groceries or wine. There’s no choice for me, no opt out, no polite refusal. I have to go outside into the Winter at least three time a day. Miss Tibbit the Useless prefers fewer times in truly foul conditions. Hamish the Corgi goes out there whenever I go, climate is secondary to boon companionship. Two tools allow me to filter out the Winter. 1. Joan of Arctic wool lined, faux-furry, Sorel rubber boots. I wear them with my suits, squeeze them on over my ancient magic-dissertation-writing sweatpants, tuck my jeans down in. I CAN’T FEEL THE COLD IN THEM. Knees down, I’m inside, next to a roaring fire. 2. Kate Spade gigantic sunglasses. I poke those architectural specs onto my nose during howling snow storms, for days of hazy winter twilight at noon, and in those rare-for-Buffalo sun-glared snow conditions. The lenses are so big, cover so much of my face…everything on the far side of the Kate Spades is artificial, none of …