Winter’s icy grip

Well this winter has been taxing and it is not even April 15th yet. Though I was born in cold country, I successfully have avoided significant bonding with snow and non-edible Eskimo pies for most of my adult life. Oh sure everyone’s a fan of the white stuff when eying a shiny curvaceous igloo or better yet, slathering up with a big slab of blubber before a ski outing. But it takes a brawny breed better than me to brave nature’s coldest shoulders when the ice chips are truly down.

The cave I call home and in my travels out and about remind me more of Siberia every day. 5 foot piles of street and parking-lot snow have condensed into homely and dirty icy ‘acne lumps’ all over town. I actually don’t mind having the frozen tundra cover my weedy lawn though. Not only does the morning paper slide a lot closer to the door, but when I go out to get the rag I enjoy startling the deer and watching their white tails slip and stumble in terror over the headlines.

Maybe it’s just that I have just reached geezer status, but for the first time in my life I have donned a heated blanket to keep my tootsies toasty too. Have you seen the safety warnings that accompany these big furry hunks of cloth? With that Christmas tree wiring harness, I am actually afraid to fold the thing, much less SLEEP under it. I’m not sure how I will wash off all those bed-ridden bugs when my bad ‘blankie’ starts to smell ‘rankie’ and stand on its own in the corner.

So these are the frigid fingers that Winter’s hand has dealt this year. I know soon enough, like everyone else, I will be fighting the rain, hail, wind, and the swampy heat too. I try to see that the frosty mug is always half full, despite the challenges of any season. I complain a lot but at least in the Winter the garage has its own mighty icy grip on a lot more frozen waffles and popsicles than any of my wimpy refrigerators do!

‘Wannabe’ Phil

Amazingly I survived the mighty Midwest weather blast this week relatively none worse for the wear. Fortunately the predicted onslaught of snow, ice, and A-Gore’s feverish fears of unbridled global warming, melted off like cold sleet on a hot shingle. To make things even more fun, man’s most over-rated beaver, 'Punxsutawney Phil' once again graced us all with his toothy little Gobblers Knob.

Honestly I take about as much stock in Groundhog day as I do with our local weather chimps on T.V. I just cannot get behind any creature which has THAT much hair and usually predicts the WRONG outcome rightly and the right stuff rarely. I am not sure if that groundhog is even all that interested in working up a charitable sweat for meteorology anyway. I do sympathize with ‘bucktoothed Philly’ on this front though, since I personally know how taxing working one whole day per year can be.

Who is the genius that decided on an up-sized woodchuck shadow should be the authority on predicting future weather? That makes about as much sense as the meal worms in my flour knowing what kind of bread is best to bake for a wake - which is the Hindi flatbread fav ‘ROTi’ by the way.

I’m telling you, if you are looking for dark shadows, regardless of illumination, wouldn’t it make sense to start with a 'Dumbo-sized' animal or at least a bloodsucking vampire bat-brain? So shed your top hat and high-brow overcoat because the groundhog’s day in the limelight has passed. Yeah move over Phil, because I for one am confident that Al Gore’s road-hugging inflated girth, can obviously out-shadow and predict the weather much better than all other pompous overstuffed wannabe squirrels. Just look at that hair - its gotta be windy!

Crooked Cookie

Though I am better at making little girls cry, with the Girl Scout cookie season upon us, I of course try to do my caloric duty and buy a few boxes to help the little ‘lasses keep their sashes’. Now except for the shortbread cookies, there are about 20 cookies to a box, so that works out to a cool 17 cents plus a cookie. Geez at that rate, I am not sure how I can maintain my road-hugging girth without a loan from a Chinese investment banker or at least a ‘fur-ball’ from a fat-cat?

To supplement my cookie habit, I have to resort to roaming the dollar stores in search of those off-brand bagged and bulk varietals. No they are not nearly as quality as the Girl Scout offerings but when any cookie is dunked in milk or coffee it magically ‘mushifies’ and takes on the delightful flavoring of the surrounding liquid. Tempting as it is, I have never dunked any of the Scouts – they are just too fragile and their parents would probably complain.

My one problem with cheapo cookies may appear superficial but it still bothers me. For some reason when making a sandwich cookie, often one side of the cookie will be crookedly mounted on the cream center. Is it too much to ask to have a perfectly apolitical cookie that is not too left or too right of center? It also frustrates me when the decorative embossed cookie’s topside is turned upside down on the cream.

How hard can it be to get a nice n’ orderly cookie that lines up on an axis right side up - after all, a bunch of green girly scouts seem to do it flawlessly every time? Oh I know, that’s why we all give up 350 pretty pennies to the Scout-ettes to treat our taste buds to a box of their top-drawer fat pills. Just like the U.S. government, I guess the Chinese will have to keep financing my good fortune and bad habits. I’ll have to learn to tolerate the occasional crooked cookie after dinner – it’ll be OK as long as it has a piece of paper with good news inside it!

You Dim Some you lose some

You know I can accept that the world is not flat and eggs actually DID come before chickens ( or is it the other way around?), but one fact I cannot grasp is that the light bulb as I once knew it is CHANGING??? Oh sure those freaky squiggle and LED bulbs may save some energy but I am not sure that they are either better or less costly in the long run? All I know is they sure look dumb sticking out of the ‘in the door’ lighted refrigerator water and ice dispenser.

I like my old fashioned bulbs. It was the one constant in my life that worked just as well when I was a kid as it does now. To this day I never tire of switching between all three levels of a 3-way bulb and basking in their warm glow as I am trying to spy through the neighbor’s mail. Now those squiggle lights start-up a little dim and then burn hot and glaringly stark for my taste.

I am also not a big fan of having to evacuate the premises if I drop one of the loopy lights due to the poisonous gas prize inside. LED lights are safe but always have a kind of cold bluish tint to them and can’t cast a wide beam. Why would ANY wife need something other than their husbands, when having to put up with something that is ‘dim’ and emits killer gas when treated improperly?

I hate buying light bulbs that are made in China over good ol’ fashioned globular American bulbs. We Yanks still love wall to wall carpeting and our space program is more mature than the Chinese, so logically we should know more about vacuums than anyone right? Now even though these new bulbs last longer and use a few cents less energy every day, when they do burn out they cost $5 to replace paid to a foreign manufacturer over a traditional 50 cent light bulb built domestically.

If this losing ‘False economy’ thinking continues to catch on, I expect we can export chopsticks to China at ten times what they are paying now (assuming we leave out the costly poison gas). Sadly I forgot though, the world is still not flat AND the Chinese are not 'dim' enough to ‘see the light’ my way - who would have 'thunk' it!

Strange bathroom bedfellows

Except for the kitchen, I would guess our home’s bathrooms are just about the most important places we can occupy. Oh sure a comfy bed is important but I can sleep almost anywhere when I sweep the peanut shells away. But after I’ve jostled that gut-harbored chili dog in the car all day or just double chugged a 2 liter bottle of soda , that white-tiled echo chamber is my true sanctuary.

Of course the odd things you find in a bathroom are not all organic. I recently found my wife’s freakish pairing of technology in a nail clipper with a tiny built-in light and a giant magnifying glass. While I understand that along with Ol’ Susanna, we geezers in training have been around the bend a few times, I have to be honest, I don’t want to see any giant toe parts and ‘3D’ finger nails all 'sunshiny' bright in my face’!

Can somebody also explain to me the allure of having nose tissues with built-in goo in them? These ‘Puff’ brand facial tissues seem to be very proud of the fact that they have some kind of lotion woven inside the tissue fabric. Gee, silly me - I thought the whole purpose of Kleenix was to get the wet stuff off my nose, not put it on?

Finally, the showers in my house have phones built-in to the wall. I am not sure why this was a good idea originally but doesn’t everyone think that Ma Bell is all wet? Even assuming that I WANT to take down a message while washing my hair, I never can find anywhere to stick my pencil!