Ok, so I live in Minnesota where, unlike places like Hawaii or Arizona, the weather actually changes.
Change is OK. Change is good.
Except when the weather is so god damned schizophrenic that the robins end up making six or seven round trips to Alabama per year!
Two weeks ago it was 90 degrees on a Tuesday. The following Saturday, it snowed. A lot. Then there was a couple of days when I was all for nuking Canada because they keep sending us those fucking Arctic cold fronts. (Damn you Alberta! Curse you Manitoba! Bite my frozen extremeties, Saskatchewan! Burn, no, freeze in hell, Ontario!) Yesterday it was moderately nice, even if a few degrees below normal. Calm winds, blue skies most of the day, birdies chirping, little, green shoots peeking up to greet the wan sunlight…but then the clouds started to build about 7:00pm, and now we have…
today!
It don’t get no miserabler than this. First, an icy, bone chilling rain. Lovely. Then the rain freezes in mid-fall to the size of birdshot. I can deal with it–put the hood up on my coat. But when you add in a 40-50 mph wind…!
I had to go to the store to get some rigatoni fixin’s, and it felt like I was being fucking maced! Those damn little pellets hurt!. The parking lot at the grocery store had little rivers of ice water flowing through it. Nice touch–wet feet to go along with ice needles in my face. Then, after grocery shopping, I get back to find my truck has been cryogenically sealed–the key in the lock won’t turn. Fuck! Ok, set the groceries down while I dick around trying to get into my truck and out of When Cumulo Nimbuses Attack. Pick up the first grocery bag. Plop, flop, splash. The bottom of the bag has given way.
At this point, I’m wayyyy too angry to even swear. Growling like a wolverine with a ferret stuck in his throat, I begin stuffing groceries into the space behind the seat. Done. I can go home now.
Of course the roads have become one large skating rink. You can’t really drive in those conditions. All you can do is sort of point the vehicle in the general direction you hope to go and pray you can stop when you get there. It takes me about 10 minutes to go four blocks, and I start to make the turn into the alley.
~15 miles per hour.
That’s too fast.
The rear end of the truck passes me as I exclaim gawdamightyshit! I enter the alley on a bias wondering whose garage I’m going to take out. But the truck completes its circumnavigation, and I stop. Right in front of someone’s garage door. I look, and no-one seems to’ve noticed my eccentric alley-entry antics. Slowly, ever so slowly, I begin to back and fill until I’m again pointed the right way. I creep down the alley and into my parking space. I stuff canned goods into my pockets, cradle the rest of the groceries in my arms, and walk up to my door.
My renter meets me. “I’m glad you’re home. The oven quit working.”
Fuck me.
I take a deep breath and head downstairs to my little living area. I call my appliances guy. He can come out on Tuesday.
I tell my renters that, if they need to cook something in the oven, they can use mine until Tuesday.
I want to be a chipmunk. They sleep through the winter.
