It has been a fabulous weekend in terms of weather! I know it sounds insane to be thrilled about highs in the 40s, but anyone who lives where it snows will appreciate it. This is one of those weekends where you have to take advantage of the weather to get things done, so when I got looking out at the two-plus feet of snow on the deck yesterday, I knew we had to do something about it.
Since it was my great idea, I figured I’d get out the plastic snow shovel, go out there, zip through the shoveling and surprise Randy with a snow-free wooden platform that looks (sorta) like a deck instead of an iceberg.
So I got the shovel from the garage, figuring I’d walk around the house instead of through it, so I could start shoveling from the steps instead of tromping all over what I still needed to shovel and packing it down. There are three steps and they went okay, but my iceberg analogy was closer than I’d dreamed. I stood on the top step, balanced precariously in my new snowboots that have a wedge heel - okay, yes, I know. But they look cool, and I wasn’t THINKING of how I’d manage shuffling through snowdrifts while trying not to twist my ankle. So shut up.
Anyway, I stood on the step, wielding my shovel, intending to take a good load of snow. Instead, I discovered that there is a thin coating of snow over god only knows how much ice. All the snow had packed down, frozen, thawed a little, refroze, etc. The dryer vent is under the deck, too, and that never even dawned on me. In the process of trying to get what snow I could, I even managed to fall down. Which is par for the course - I have to fall down on my ass in public (no fences in the back) at least once per winter, or my year isn’t complete. At least this year I got it over with early.
I was standing on top of all this mess, gasping and panting, arms already aching when it occurred to me that I wasn’t going to be able to do this. At least, not with that shovel, and since it’s a wooden platform - not to mention, not ours - I couldn’t use the metal shovel. I had to call in reinforcements. I stuck my head into the house and hollered for help from any big, strong males in the vicinity. Which, luckily for me, brought both Randy and DaBoy out. Also the cat, but he’s too short to be of any assistance.
Randy shoveled most of the layers that would have fascinated geologists off the sides of the deck while DaBoy and I stomped around trying to break up as much ice as we could without giving ourselves shin splints or falling down. Again.
By the time we were done, we’d gotten about half the ice off the deck and even managed to expose the wood. There were these large islands of ice that were too thick to do anything about…Randy came outside at one point just in time to stop me from attacking it (”But I was going to be careful!”) with the icebreaker.
I imagine we drove the neighbors crazy, what with all the stomping, thumping, thudding, scraping and cursing. Today, we actually got it all cleaned up, but we are SORE. My back and knee hurts and my arms, particularly the left, are really the worst. Randy’s complaining about his hip hurting. If you were to listen to our conversation without knowing how old we are, you’d think we’re the poster children for arthritis.
Aaaaaaaaaaand it’s supposed to rain tomorrow, switching over to snow after midnight and then snow all day Tuesday. Well, at least we’ll have a few days for the soreness to go away before we have to do it all over. Why’d we move here, again?
Currently, the temp is -2 degrees. That’s the air temp. I don’t know what the wind chill is. But tonight, it’s supposed to get down to around -15 degrees, -30 with the wind chill.
And there’s this cat. He showed up about three months ago, all gorgeous, black and glossy and looking exactly like our cat, except without the flab hanging down from his belly like our cat has. We even rushed inside to make sure ours hadn’t gotten out even though we couldn’t imagine how he’d be able to pull off an escape. Houdini, he is not. Hell, intelligent, he is not. Anyway, it wasn’t ours but it had a good body weight on it, so, other than having that, “heeeeyy…..where’s our cat?” moment every time we saw him, we didn’t pay much attention.
Until a few weeks ago when we saw him again. He’s thin, scraggly and looks like our cat after one of those psycho crash diets. Can’t stand that, so we started putting food out for him on the deck stairs in one of our spare metal bowls. It was very gratifying to see him eating voraciously, then meandering over to the neighbor’s shed, going underneath where there is no snow and bathing, then napping in the sun.
So for a couple of weeks, we put cat food out there every day. Until one evening, DaBoy and I looked outside just in time to see a long, hairless tail disappearing under the deck stairs. Which meant we’d been feeding either a possum or an enormous rat. Also, whatever it was had taken our expensive metal bowl under the deck with it and now we can’t get it back until all the snow melts. Because it’ll move once it realizes that the deck doesn’t offer shelter from rain, see.
But we still had this starving cat coming around and from the way he inhaled every bit of cat food we put out, we were the only ones feeding him. So we gave up on the bowl and just starting dumping a scoop of food right outside the door, figuring the usurper wouldn’t get that close to the house, but we knew the cat would from the paw prints in the snow.
Wrong.
One night our cat started trying to tear the blinds down from the sliding glass door. DaBoy, Randy and I rushed over, I snapped on the deck light and there, right squarely in front of the door, pinned by the light, was a gigantic possum. Apparently, cat food is very good for them. He stood there glaring at us as though we were the intruders for a minute before sauntering casually around the circumference of the deck rails (see photo gallery for pix of the rails) and vanishing under the deck again.
Stymied, Randy and I debated on what to do. We went out to the garage to smoke, raised the garage door up about 18 inches, and discussed it. During a pause in the conversation, we both saw four black paws approaching up the driveway. As we stood there in surprise, this black catface appeared under the edge of the garage door, followed by the rest of our stray. He stood there staring at us, like, “Uh, it’s about this possum in the back? Can we do something different?”
Randy went in for food while the cat and I stood there staring at each other. He backed off a couple feet while Randy scooped out a pile of cat food for him, then ate with very little concern regarding us. Finished, he walked away. We could clearly see his hip bones jutting out under his scraggly fur and that did it. I called animal control and asked for a trap.
I called them on a Friday, but they don’t pick up strays over the weekend, so we agreed on Monday. In the meantime, she told me to put out a box with towels in it that he could use for shelter. I did that, and then we saw no sign of him at all throughout the whole weekend. The food we put out was untouched - no possum out FRONT, anyway - and by Sunday morning, we were convinced that he hadn’t survived the subzero temps. We were debating calling animal control off when lo, the stray showed up. He headed straight for the box, low-walking, you know, in case we decided to get too close and inhaled everything edible. We assume he had a den of some kind, but no access to food. He’d hide out there until hunger overcame him and then he’d come to us.
Monday, the lady from the animal shelter brought the trap, showed me how to set it and gave me a direct number to call for when we got the cat. Who, naturally, didn’t show. At all. I kept the garage door open about a foot so I could glance out every so often, but the trap stayed empty and the catfood, liberally sprinkled with tuna juice, stayed untouched.
Today it began to snow. Again. Some more. I finally had to move the trap inside the garage to keep the towel and food from getting buried. I knew how cold it’s supposed to get tonight, and I knew if he didn’t show up by 8:30 PM we were going to have to bring the trap inside again, since there is nobody to pick up strays after 9 PM.
But at about 6, he finally appeared while I was out in the garage. He wandered around the garage for a while, occasionally checking to make sure I was still sitting in my chair, and finally, FINALLY, went into the trap. What an incredible relief.
Where he would be freezing, possibly to death tonight, he’ll be warm and fed, if not entirely happy. He’s not wild, but he is extremely skittish. I have high hopes that he’s just lost or that he’ll get adopted. He really is a beautiful cat when his bones aren’t sticking out. I think we saved him, I really do. Feels good. 
I have this dayrunner. I bought it when we started our corporation a few years back. I picked it because it looks all official and classy and executive. It’s a Franklin/Covey, which means that when you go for official, classy and executive, you also get PRICEY.
Now I’m completely dependent on it. I mean, totally, to the point where if I don’t get a refill the very instant I need one, I’m totally lost. Never mind that my computer can happily tell me what the date/day/time is, I don’t think to look. If my dayrunner isn’t there, or if I even forget to turn the page before I go to bed at night, I’ll spend the whole next day thinking it’s the day before.
And, naturally, it always ends up being mid-January before I go get a refill, so I spend at least two weeks in freefall, not having any idea what the date is, no-place to write future appointments - I never could do the sticky note thing - and generally lost in the minutiae of time.
This year, I actually got ahead of myself, and picked up a refill during the last week of December. Yay, me! Except for one thing; apparently, Franklin/Covey not only makes yearly refills, they also make fiscal refills. Guess which one I picked up. It never even occurred to me to check it; I was just too happy to have one before the end of the year for once, and even stuck with the plain, no frills pattern to save a few bucks. So I came home all proud of myself, grab my dayrunner, and begin tearing through 17 layers of plastic wrap, inserts and even ads for Microsoft Outlook because they’re in charge of EVERYTHING.
It wasn’t until I noticed that the January tab was missing that I realized what I’d done; I’d gone and bought a refill for April of ‘08 to March of ‘09. Now, I ask you. Who buys those? Besides me, that is.
It took until today to get back to the store and exchange it for a calendar-year refill. So naturally, I had a stack of appointments and reminders I had to write in it, including the season premier of “LOST”, during which I am planning to be unavailable even if GOD calls or comes over. And I hate, hate JJ Abrams, which should tell you how desperate I am for actual scripted tv with, you know, plots and story arcs. I even watch “October Road”, which is a confession I never thought I’d make.
Anyway, I finally have my refill. Except. The only one available was called “Blooms”. I am so not a “Blooms” person. As I was carefully feeding the pages onto the clasps, I swear, I could smell perfume. Randy offered to take it back and get a different design because this one is going to make me ill eventually - there’s a photo of the Flower Of The Month on the actual date in the corner of the page, making it a little hard to read - but I figure if I wait that long, it’ll be April, and I may as well have kept the first one.
I am an idiot. I say this because I keep doing bonehead things.
It is wintertime. In the Midwest. Currently, the air temp is 15 degrees with a goodly wind blowing, which means it could be all the way down into the single digits with the wind chill. I could look it up, but I don’t really think I want to know. And we smoke. I know, shut up. But we’re leasing this house and we can’t smoke inside - not that we would, anyway, not with DaBoy in residence - so we go out into the garage whenever the craving for nicotine overpowers the craving for warmth.
So, this morning, I shuffled out there with my coffee, opened the garage door up all the way (I can only really do that when Randy isn’t home. I like to look outside; Randy prefers not to freeze) and noticed that the ashtray needed to be emptied. The trashcan is outside the garage, so I picked it up, carried it across the garage, stepped outside, dumped it and strolled back to our smoking section, thinking, “wow, it’s not too cold out here. It’s a beautiful, clear sunny day, too. Nice!”
I sat down with my coffee, lit a cigarette and at that moment, the semi-warm air in the garage which is the result of it being attached…..departed. A playful breeze wandered into the garage, curiously circled all of the walls and chased out any warmth remaining. Including what was in my coffee cup.
I sat there holding my cup, feeling the coffee getting colder by the second, feeling icy spots where I had exposed skin (hands, ankles, neckline, face) thinking, “Oh. Duh.” I looked like a dragon, and not just because I hadn’t had a shower yet.
Needless to say, I quickly finished up my business out there and hurried back inside. I figure if I can confine myself to one cigarette per hour, that should give the garage time to warm up a little again (it faces south) before I go back out there and open up the door.
This should be fun….
I have come to the conclusion that this house has no walls. Oh, it LOOKS like it does, but they’re actually just a projection. I know this, because no matter where one is in the house, no matter what tone one uses for a conversation, it can be clearly heard regardless of where the listener is.
The other night, I was on the phone with S-mom, trying to work out summer visitation. We’d gotten a packet in the mail for next year’s football schedule, and there are some things that have to be done over the summer. Football camp, physicals, sign-up and equipment distribution, weight training classes, blah, blah. Both camp and weight training are two-hour a day things. Camp lasts a week, and training goes on all summer, but you can only use the equipment from 10:00 AM until Noon.
S-mom offered to have DaBoy’s dad take him to the Y during their time with him so he can do his weight training there. Not as restrictive, and in theory, he’ll actually get to USE some of the equipment rather than spending the entire two hours waiting his turn. After we agreed to that, DaBoy came downstairs from his room to tell me that he doesn’t want to use the Y. He started to explain what his problem with it is, but I was totally derailed by the question of how he even knew about the conversation. He’d been upstairs in his room the whole time, while I’d been in the kitchen. He said he could hear me. Le Sigh.
Last night, while fixing dinner, Randy and I began fantasizing about winning the lottery. Well, hell. Who doesn’t? I was in one of those moods where you shouldn’t even leave your bedroom but I had to fix dinner and brought up the lottery thing as a way to cheer up a little. While talking about it, the question of what to do with DaBoy came up. Well, it’s kind of a legitimate question, after all. You can’t win a multi-million dollar jackpot and keep sending your child to the bus stop every morning to go to public school. May as well put a sign on his back in neon letters that shout: MY PARENTS WON THE LOTTERY! I’M WORTH MILLIONS IN RANSOM!!
We were still debating the pros and cons of a private tutor vs a boarding school when the food was ready. We called DaBoy down from his room to eat and when he came into the kitchen, he informed us that boarding school was OUT and that he would prefer a private tutor, but what he’d really rather do is stay where he already goes. Then we had to spend dinner explaining why he couldn’t, which turned into a hilarious discussion of security measures we’d have to take. I personally want the Verizon Network people. There are hundreds of them, they have helicopters, and lord knows, there are enough phones and walkies amongst them that calling for help wouldn’t be a problem.
Anyway, the moral of the story is, check the accoustics in your house before discussing private things that you don’t want your kids to know about, and then REMEMBER it when having those kinds of conversations!
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