A Season of Reruns:

We interrupt this broadcast to bring you the following
special report:



We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming:

Raise your hand if you're ready to change the channel to spring after seeing that special report.*




*although the air temp on Tuesday was 52, with plentiful sunshine and not a hint of wind, bay water temp was 38. Yes, my dog is insane. It's hereditary.

Which would you prefer?

Hell:


Or Heaven:


It's that time of year again, where I ask myself daily, "What was I thinking?!"

Hell has always been portrayed as a hot, burning place. That version is wrong. Hell is frozen over, where you can't go outside without spending half an hour layering up, and then have to cart that extra 50 lbs with you. Hell is your butt touching that toilet seat at 3:00 a.m. while at the same moment one bare foot misses the rug and lands on the cold tile floor. Hell is never being able to make your fingers function because they're always frozen numb. Hell is weeks and weeks of starting each day by scraping and shoveling frozen stuff off your walk and car and driveway.

As we enter March, I count the number of boat canvas jobs that came into my shop during the month of February: 0. Which matches my bank account, unless you count the credit card, then it's less than nothing. Zip also matches my enthusiasm for gray, damp, dank, chill New England days.

Without gas money to flee south for a break in a car that needs brakes, there's nothing to be done except suffer through, awaiting the season of plenty. The arrival of spring will hopefully see hell thaw out. The mud stage should usher in sunshine, sailing weather, and income.

And when the leaves turn dead and drop off as the season of replenishment winds down, if anyone should hear me even think about staying here another winter, please whap me with a big hunk of fish carcass until I come to my senses.

I'm going back to sleep. Don't wake me till it's green and sunny out, or unless your boat is in the tropics needing canvas work, and you're willing to fly me, my sewing machine and all the materials in to do the work.

At this moment, I will work for sunshine.

Snow+Out of Shape Lymie Body+Snow Shovel=Call an EMT(emergency massage therapist)

"Is this all of it?"

Apparently, New England weather reporters are so bored out of their minds with our mild winter, highly jealous of their mid-Atlantic counterparts who have mega snow to play with, that they’re making up weather. I should have know that the report was all hype, because I simply could not match the dire predictions for our area with what my eyeballs saw on radar.

Being the good cruising sailor that I am, always prepared for a thrashing from Mother Nature, I readied the house where I’m pet sitting for friends. I filled containers with water, set out candles and flashlights, cranked up a nice fire in the wood stove, and covered the holes in the roof with a tarp. I got the cat dressed in his little boots, sending him out to the top of the driveway with a bucket of salt. I made sure there was plenty of licorice tea and yogurt raisins on hand. Just as the snow began to fall, I took the dogs for a long romp in our favorite hiking spot. After all, who needs wild animals loose in the house in the middle of storm?

I left my own home in the hands of my housemates.
They have people who shovel for them.
I have lymes.

Yesterday afternoon, gearing up mentally and physically, I ventured out armed with a snow removal device, implementing my plan to shovel each time the snow reached four inches, or until I keeled over, whichever came first. Reaching the summit of the driveway, I found myself still standing, utterly stoked. I did it! For the first time in seven months, my mind overturned the conviction that the battle would never be won against the legions of nasty little lymie creatures munching away at me, believing that there would always be a handful of rebels hiding out, making sneak attacks when no one was looking, but now, there's hope that I can soon say “I had lymes.” Past tense.

Soaking wet, I staggered back inside to wait for the next four inches of snow to fall, so I could go out to shovel again. When it got dark, and meteorologists were still threatening us with heavy, heavy snow, I made sure the car was angled correctly to shine headlights up the drive so I could see to shovel. Finally, I let the dogs out into the two inches of fresh snow that had fallen in the last eight hours, and then went to bed.

All you poor souls buried alive just south of here, don’t hate us because we’re not inundated. After all, we spent last winter encrusted in ice while you all romped through unscathed. This year, it’s just your turn to get our snow. Besides, winter ain’t over yet. Mother Nature is still in charge, and could give us a stupendous spanking at any moment she chooses.

How to Bedevil Your Beaver

Now that I have your attention by making you think that you're going to read something sexual relating to the female nether regions, please let me disappoint your notion.

To beleaguer a beaver, begin by driving out the in the morning and finding that a tree by the pond has fallen more than halfway across the driveway:

At first, in your sleepy state, wonder what made that tree fall, because there was no snow, ice, hurricanes or tornadoes. In fact there wasn't even a zephyr of a breeze the previous night. You know that because of the number of times you were awakened last night by those pesky squirrels partying in the rafters. Stop thinking about squirrel annihilation, and call your friend who owns the property to report said tree to her, because although cars can squeeze by, no tractor trailer that may be coming down the drive that day will be able to reach the greenhouses to pick up their load of lovely fresh herbs growing there.

No not that kind of herb. Get over it.

Get out of the car and take a look to see that the fallen tree was the overnight shift work of beavers:

Unfortunately, times are hard everywhere, and Bosley Beaver wasn’t allowed to work overtime. That meant that although he managed to get the tree down by the end of his shift, he was unable to stay on the job long enough to strip it and haul it away to the new addition being built on the dam. “Oh well”, thought Mr. Beaver, “I’ll just have to leave it until I come back to work again.”

Imagine Bosley’s bewilderment when he arrived back at work the next evening, only to discover that after spending an entire shift gnawing down a tree, it was no longer where he had left it. He now had to start all over, after reporting the incident so an investigation could be begun into the disappearance of the tree.

The rest of us are now concerned about the fate of the wood guy, who came along and cut up the beaver’s tree for firewood, if the beavers figure out whodunit.

I wonder what type of punishments beavers mete out to tree thieves?

The Grinch Rocks

When mom walked in, daughter and I were sitting casually at the newly assembled table, putting together a puzzle.

Well, actually, we were diddling with the pieces. Neither of us is into puzzles. That was mom’s thing, which is why we had strewn puzzle pieces across the table.

Daughter and I got rid of that stupid Christmas tree in an hour, all neatly boxed, labeled, and stowed in the basement, dragging out the table to put in its place. “What is this?” Mom asked. “What have you done with my tree?”

“Your tree got voted off the island. Would you like to work on this puzzle?” We moved aside as Mom stepped up to the table, trying to act annoyed. But we could tell that she was pleased. She spent the next two hours happily assembling puzzle bits.*

Really, she couldn’t complain, because after all, it wasn’t like she was completely tree-less. Out of the goodness of our grinchy little hearts, and in the spirit of compromise to keep the peace, not because we’re scared of mom or anything, we left her a bit of tree, the top part, nicely planted in a pot. We even strung some lights. I can’t complain about that either, because it makes a handy night light when I have to go downstairs to pee.

But mom may get her revenge. The puzzle that we haphazardly grabbed off the shelf, rushing because we could hear mom approaching from outside, turned out to be a Christmas one, with snow and reindeer and other holiday doodoo dads.

She has threatened to hang it on the wall behind the table when it’s finished.** Where it would be the first thing we would see each and every time we came in the door. BAH HUMBUG!


*Mom is now re-assembling those same bits as I post this. That cat really can fly, but needs to work on her landings a bit more.
**the cat may continue ‘accidentally’ scattering puzzle pieces across the floor, preventing any threat of a holiday scene being finished and hung up in sight of the grinches.

Go, Kitty, Go!