may the force be with you.....

Like the rest of New York City and pretty much the whole eastern seaboard I have had it with the snow. I don’t have to commute to work, I don’t have babies that need milk nor do I have a husband that works for the much maligned Sanitation Department…but still I hate THIS MUCH snow. I hate it for a myriad of reasons.

Since I was 12 I have never been able to get boots over my calves. Not the stylish ones anyway. Sure the hideous ankle length ones that look like snow tires on the bottom…the ones that leave just enough room for the snow to creep up and over the top and fill the boot with frigid snow and cause frostbitten ankles…those I can get.

The snow has scared the birds away from the feeder that my husband hung outside my kitchen window so that I can watch the cardinals, blue jays and even woodpeckers come and happily peck away. Instead I get to watch the damn rodent squirrels gnaw on the birdhouse so that they can get to the food that is meant for little beaks. I chase them so often that they are no longer alarmed by my idle threats and I think I even saw one of their grey little paws give me the finger!

I have never walked my dog. Well not never, but not often...he goes in the yard. Sad but true. It gives Mr. Wonderful something to do on Saturday mornings. Scoop the Poop. Sweep the Heap. Trap the Crap. No matter what you call it, that’s his job. I feed the dog…we’re even! However, with the snow, my faggy ass dog wont go down the steps to the yard. He pretends that it is his arthritic legs that keep from plotting a course down the snow covered stairs, but when my granddaughter has anything edible his arthritic legs work miraculously well as he chases her around the house waiting for a crumb to drop. Say Halleluiah!! Instead he wants to circle and squat on the deck outside my kitchen. Like the squirrels before him, he has learned that my threats to throw him down the stairs are idle ones. So as he circles, I leave the room so as to give him some privacy. I then throw snow on it. Hey, it works….til my pooper scooper gets home from work.

I look hideous in hats. Ditto ear muffs. Double ditto hoods. Some people look cute in hats, me…not so much!   Ear muffs make me look like Princess Leia and while the 'brothers' can pull off a hoodie and look menacing, I just look like a mess.   Dr. Oz says you lose a lot of body heat through your head…*&%# you Dr. Oz, have you seen me in a hat??

My gloves all have holes in the fingertips from my nails. Besides it is close to impossible to turn a doorknob, tie a shoe or text while gloved. I know they now sell fingerless gloves for that reason, but it seems a little pointless to have warm palms and frozen fingertips. So mainly I go gloveless and risk frozen fingers rather than have someone receive a text from me that looks something like this: hlsm dkeii fjsslklk : )

I have lost three scarves already this winter. I have no idea where I lose them, but I think that I leave them slung over diner chairs where they eventually become a nice gift for the waiter’s wife or they have fallen off the closet hangers into the bottomless pit of my coat closet. They will not be seen again til spring when the winter coats are packed away. Even the knitted one my niece made me, which grew longer and longer each season as it stretched under its own weight….missing! I especially liked that one because it was so long it hung out from under my jacket which for some reason annoyed my anal retentive boss. I wore it often, maybe for that very reason.

With this much snow, even if I dug out my car, even if I was able to navigate the street corners without sliding, even if I could find somewhere to park when I got to said destination….what do I do when I get home to find someone took the parking spot I exhaustingly dug out with frozen ankles, frostbitten fingers and a sub-zero skull? I know you can’t save spots (although I have tried with garbage cans which were moved…grrr) and I know that if I found a spot somewhere else I couldn’t give a rat’s ass who dug it out (ever wonder where that expression came from and what the hell it even means??) but the thought of being faced with that dilemma causes me to stay put. Which leads to another dilemma. I have no excuse not to clean my house. So as I watch the snow fall outside I see all my excuses fall away as well.

 

I have amazing neighbors.  They are super shovelers and although I haven't really tried too hard, I can't seem to get out there before them.   Before the last flake falls, before the weatherman says it is over, our walks are shoveled and salted.  Our steps are cleared and even our WELCOME mats are hung over the railing to dry.  The problem with this wonderful situation is simple...guilt.  As I sit nursing my second cup of coffee they are shoveling and chopping.  As I step from my hot shower they are back revving up the the snow blower for yet another go at it.  I feel so guilty that I am not out there freezing with them, although apparently not guilty enough to don a pair of Princess Leia muffs and a shovel. 

Morgan and me

Some time ago I made a bucket list. A bucket list for those of you who‘ve never heard of one, is a list of things you want to do or accomplish before you die. Before you ‘kick the bucket’. I put things on there that were easily attainable, just so that I didn’t feel like a total failure on my death bed as I reviewed the list and fell miserably short of the accomplishments I had aspired to. I also put things on that list that I know will never come to pass….like climbing the stairs at the Parthenon ruins in Greece. Since I have trouble navigating the nine steps to my front door, that one will probably not have a check mark next to it. The most achievable ones I put first. The harder ones further down, and the ones that quite frankly ain’t gonna happen are last. Again I figured, struggling to read my list as I drooled my last drool….I would be dead by the time I reached the bottom of the list and never realize I missed a few.

 

Some people have New Year resolutions…promises that they will do something to better themselves, their lives or the lives of someone else. My list is totally self serving. It is stuff I want to do, because I want to do it. For me. Only me. Selfish. Nice resolution I have…to be more selfish in 2011.

The obvious ones made the list too, in no particular order. Lose a ton of weight. (…almost literally) I also want to write a book, play the piano, patent something, and skydive. (pity the poor instructor who will be strapped to me as we hurl towards earth) I want tickets for Saturday Night Live, see Venice before it sinks or the rats take over the entire city, share a song with Barry Manilow, a beer with Stephen King and a bed with Keifer Sutherland (in Jack Bauer mode). I want to buy something from an auction house like Sotheby’s or Christie’s, learn to do yoga correctly (without serious injury to myself or others), and I want to donate a million dollars to a deserving charity, which of course is preceded by…I want to win the lottery! Somewhere on the list is the need to learn to dance, the basics….the cha cha, samba, merengue and maybe even the hula. (god knows I’ve got the hips for it) I want to go skiing or at least find a pair of ski boots that will fit over my calves. And speaking of calves, I want to milk a cow and own a pot-bellied pig.

I want to learn to speak Italian, and while my Rosetta Stone DVD is a great learning tool I can still only say “L'uomo con il cappello nero siede sul cavallo marrone” which loosely translated means, ‘the man with the black hat sits on the brown horse”. And while I am quite proud of that accomplishment it will be rather hard to fit into a conversation. I want to start an online business selling something I invented and patented making me a millionaire which in-of-itself would take care of three listed items.  I want to see the pyramids in Eygpt (are there pyramids anywhere else now that I think about it?), Mount Rushmore and Graceland.   Tut, Roosevelt and Elvis....how's that for diversity?  I want to write a  column for a daily newspaper...maybe in Italian? 

There was a movie (aptly named, The Bucket List) with Jack Nicholson and that wonderful black actor I always think is Samuel L Jackson, but it isn’t….ummmm he was in Shawshank Redemption, Se7en, Driving Miss Daisy …..got it, Morgan Freeman. Two men, terminally ill who because of one’s wealth get to live out their bucket lists. Unfortunately I am not wealthy, but fortunately not terminal either. So although my list will be checked off a little slower I am determined to continue to check things off. So far, I got…..nothing.

twinkling twinkling twinkling

The holidays are over. Phew! While it was great fun loading and unloading the dishwasher over 63 times, arranging and rearranging furniture to accommodate dinner guests, and finger-bleeding gift wrapping sessions I had an epiphany! Christmas ain’t what it use to be! More work, more money and less wide-eyed anticipation. Even the reindeer have become high maintenance requiring glitter-laden food and organic baby carrots. To add insult to injury, I can’t remember the last time I was kissed under the mistletoe. (maybe it has something to do with the fact that the mistletoe adorning my doorway is faded plastic, missing a few berries and about 20 years old.) My nativity is gnawed and chewed by a dog I had some 30 years ago and for sentimental reasons I have not replaced it. I am never quite sure, as I place it under the tree each year, if I keep it because it was the first one we owned as a married couple, or I am glad the dog that gnawed it along with the woodwork is long dead.

I am carefully nursing my Christmas cactus that miraculously bloomed after sitting dormant on my windowsill since last year and now in order to keep those pretty pink blooms, well…blooming I had to devise a watering and fertilizing schedule. I wish it had died along with the pussy willow and ivy I tried to save from the winter frost. I now have three beautiful plants on my dining room table, two poinsettias and an orchid. They don’t stand a chance in hell.

My outdoor Christmas decorations are buried in snow. The littlest of my reindeer family blinks laboriously under the drift. The 50% off K-Mart snowflakes I bought after Christmas last year still twinkle in my window and although my tree is lit and standing it has shifted dangerously to the right apparently terrifying the angel tree topper. There are a sad few gifts left under the tree as I have put away everything but the holiday bloomers I get every year from my friend. (Nothing says Christmas like a bloomer with holly on it!) I waited for Little Christmas less commonly known as the Celebration of the Epiphany. (there’s that word again..!) Today, January 6th commemorates the last day of the Christmas holiday season. That is what I am waiting for…..that and the fact that my son, the one that moved to Queens last year, the one that takes the Christmas boxes out of the attic for me, is apparently busy. I used to do this myself. I climbed the wooden attic stairs that now creak under my weight, crawled on knees that just don’t do crawling anymore, and one by one brought up and down the multitude of boxes marked….what else, Christmas. My husband suggested that he get the boxes down, but then again he is the one that suggested he fix the storm door that the UPS man broke last year. The one that still isn’t fixed. So I think I may be in charge of box-getting this year.

I cannot listen to another version of Silent Night or Jingle Bells or even Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer without wanting to tear the ears off the side of my head. The life-sized Santa I bought in Target that terrorized my grandsons when they were younger has been unplugged so that his Ho Ho Ho doesn’t make me Heave Heave Heave him out with the trash. Christmas mugs, dishtowels and pot holders have over-taken my kitchen and I admittedly miss my embarrassingly soiled, burnt and ripped ones that got put away while snowmen and candy canes replaced them for the season. The decorative holiday pillows on my couch that I strategically placed for the first three weeks are now askew and I dare say slept on by my stinky dog. I will throw them in the wash and if some of them don’t fair so well in the rinse cycle, they will just never make it back into the attic boxes marked…Christmas. I am sick of avoiding the chocolate santas, the candy canes, and the honey balls (of course with the most honey) that are stuck to the bottom of the snowman plate.

I have stopped trying to figure out how recycle the Christmas cards. I have stopped trying to light the bayberry candle that has no wick left. I have stopped shopping the 70% off ‘all Christmas’ aisle in Walgreens. I have stopped believing my epiphany…..I love Christmas!