All posts tagged: winter

November Hoses

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The WideEyedSpouse is lying under the back porch with a heat gun. Miss-Tibbit-the-Useless-Little-Black-Dog is staring in wonderment. Crooked Hank, entering the third winter of his young life, believes it all to be nonsense. Tonight it will freeze and freeze hard. The hose stopcock is already frozen open. Probably bad things will happen in the coming arctic blast if it isn’t drained and closed. Boring, expensive things. Friends, don’t judge us here in the WideEyedHousehold! We started the snow thrower two days before this morning’s snow labor. I packed the Smooth Ride’s trunk go-bag last evening (winter coat, blanket, fruit leather, water vessel, plastic bag, cat litter, little shovel, and a Wawa Truck Pez pack). The Joan of Arctic Sorels are out and were  deployed this morning. The bomber hats undrawered last week. A person can only do so much to prepare before the wretched realization arrives – all that work is simply to endure winter. W I N T E R. I thought about tropical winters as I forcibly shoved the snow thrower through a …

Fortress of Wintertude.

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Nothing is quieter than a university office during winter break. I can hear my own heart beat between clacks on the keyboard. Not much is grimmer than a 1970s, brick built state school campus during winter break. Here looks like joy is something that happens somewhere else. One wall of my office is 25 feet of glass and I perch in my little office box, gazing out at the blowing snow. It blows in a wee baby cyclone, lifting up from the ill-designed courtyard 50 feet below.  No matter how vicious the winds across campus, how bitter the air, outside of my windows the puffy snowflakes dance and spin in mad joy.

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 …

Darkest January.

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The long haul is here. The days are cold, too cold and windy for good dog walks, gardening, anything really. The nights are frigid, too frigid for standing in awe of the starry universe. The short hours of daylight, and don’t try to convince yourself otherwise, yes the days are getting longer but they are still short – the short hours of daylight pass interminably in the dark gleam of overcast skies and no end in sight. The house creaks and bangs in the shifts from cold to exceedingly cold. I can hear my neighbor’s back door slam in the hyperlucid air. The dogs bark each time. Shivering a little at my observation post at the window, I think dark thoughts about wearing their warm furs as a cloak. That would stop the barking. Sirens blast through the city more or less constantly. January is the season of emergencies. Fires burn hotter, car accidents shatter windshields and bones more spectacularly, the cold makes the emergency greater, the response itself dangerous. The WideEyedSpouse and I have …

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 …

Lemme me see the other side.

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I’ll tell you what. I have lived in Minnesota. I know what cold feels like. I spent a couple of winters in Anchorage. I know what big snow looks like. I grew up at the South Jersey shore.  I am familiar with bone cutting, sand carrying, January winds that administer the midseason microdermabrasion treatments. Stings a bit when the feeling comes back into your cheeks. Now I’m in Buffalo. And I am becoming expert in the wintry mix. Sloppy.  Gusty. Raw. The Christmas pine garlands are flopping all over the place. And dog walks are wretched. “Yeah.” Sorry, that was Miss Tibbit interrupting us. This afternoon she pranced onto the back porch, got blasted in the face with a sleety snow, and turned around to come back inside. Wasn’t worth it. No thank you ma’am. Buffalo winter means that Hamish the Corgi and Sweet Tibbit come home from walkies with salty wet feet. Hamish’s undercarriage is a cindery mucky mess. Every time. (The cat just sneezed in my wine by the way. Just saying. Nice …

The snow shovel crept to the front of the garage.

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Five months ago the bright yellow snow shovel lurked in the back of the garage, giggling and biding its time. It was creepy and irritating. Today the show shovel made its move to the front of the garage. It rests on the snow thrower. The WideEyedSpouse and I excavated the snow thrower from under a heap of empty plant pots and landscaping tools in the back corner. It now lives in a prime position in the front so that when, not if, the snows come I can just crack open the carriage door and drag that wretched, growling, exhaust belching machine out into the winter calm. I like to stand for a moment in the quiet hiss of a million flakes landing and wallow in the low skies and monochromatic peace of the snows before I crank up the 2-stoke. After that it’s all shock and awe and far flung snow masses and the crunchy rip of dog toys grinding through the blades and fwoop, out the chute into the neighbor’s yard. There’s no serenity …

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.