Ice Man Pleadeth

I do not particularly like snow but then again, other than food there are few things on earth I enjoy shoveling on a regular basis. However, when I do have to clear the white stuff from my walkways, I consider it a chance for a little extra exercise and an opportunity to breathe a fresher sack of smog into my stale lungs. But frozen water is another matter and it’s difficult not to harden my icy personality when the house, car, and driveway are all encased in the rime for all time.

  

While I appreciate the serene TV images of pretty icicles and glistening crystallized trees, the beauty soon turns beast and my skin wears too thin to walk on when subjected to this relentless frozen cocoon. To avoid becoming a REAL-life POP-sicle, retrieving the morning newspaper requires an armor plated carcass and noggin-topper defenses to dodge frozen stalactite daggers and other squirrel droppings. I have forgotten what parts of my driveway and curbs look like since they spend so much time hidden under glaciated moraines and towering ice parapets up to my armpits.

Clearly somebody around here forgot to light the pilot light or open up the check-book and pay the sun’s heating bill and guest appearance fee. Yes my permanently shaded and ill-fated igloo is now so haunted by ice sheets that I have decided to switch my bedding to plaid flannel and strap on figure skates before every bedtime. After relentless conditioning, even ice cubes clinking around in a cup give me the Pavlovian chill thrills and make me bark like a hot-trotting Siberian Husky in heat.

Hey I know at times I may be ‘Jerky’ but who said I want to live life like an old preserved hunk of mummy-meat at subzero temperatures? If that were the case, long ago I would have cozied up my fatty flank next to that biblically significant hunk of ground round in the back of my kitchen freezer. Please remember, whenever in the future I beg for the ‘double frosted’, I am ONLY referring to the icing on cupcakes and Pop Tarts – NOT the 32 and below H2O frozen flow that I have been facing heretofo'.