The Dark Side of Sunny Days

This week we’ve had blue skies, ranging from cloudless to mostly, partly, or somewhat, blue skies. It varied. The point is that we actually could see blue instead of gray skies. We’ve had some cloudy gray skies, but not as much as usual. It was also very warm with temperatures into the 40s–even as high as almost 50 degrees! It was very pleasant to see blue sky, to feel the warmth of the sun, to hear the drip of melting slow, and to watch the mounds of deep snow shrinking. It was the tiniest whisper of Spring’s approach, but sometimes whispers are enough to bring hope.

However, there is a dark side to warm, sunny days in the winter.

What was once a firm path on the snow is softened by the sun so I take a step or two and then my foot plunges into deep snow. The snow paths are now littered with foot holes. The cooler temperatures of the night forms a hard slippery glaze on top of the snow. So walking actually involves a step, slide, plunge, slide, slide, step, plunge, step, step, step. It’s very random like hidden traps set in the snow. Walking becomes very difficult so I think that I must look like a drunkard tottering with an unbalanced gait down the paths.

Tuesday morning when I took Hannah Joy outside, I slipped on a patch of ice. My feet went up in the air and I landed right on my back. Ouch! I imagined that I looked like a cartoon character slipping on a banana. The last time I slipped on the ice was in January 2018. I remember because we had only had Hannah for a month. I broke my wrist and had to have a plate inserted in it. Fortunately, I didn’t break anything this time.

I’ve taken to carrying a 5-6 foot staff with me to help me keep my balance. I don’t know exactly what to call it. I think of it as a stick because it’s long and narrow, but it’s actually a 1 inch square board that was leftover from making a shipping box. EJ actually has a staff that he made from a long tree branch. He uses it whenever we go for a walk, no matter what season. It reminds me of Gandalf’s staff. Once in a while, EJ will ask me to hold it for him for a moment while he does something or other. I can never resist raising it up to plunge it down as I thunder, “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!” But after the first few times that I did that, EJ started telling me as soon as he hands it to me to just hold it because I don’t have the authority or security clearance to use his staff of power. Bummer. I still try though.

When EJ drove home from work in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, he got stuck coming up the icy driveway. He almost made it all the way up but then the truck slid back into deep snow. He said, “Screw it”–or words to that effect–left the truck stuck in the snow and walked up to the house and to bed. After he woke up the next morning, we went down the driveway with shovels and shoveled out the truck. It took us about an hour to free the truck and get it up to the garage.

Every day that the temperatures are warm, which has been every day so far this week, I hope that all the snow in the driveway will melt away. There are some growing bare patches, but there was an awful lot of snow in the driveway, even though our neighbor regularly snowblows it for us with his tractor. EJ hasn’t got the truck stuck again, but he says the drive down and up the driveway is “more interesting than I like.” The truck’s tire tracks have frozen into ruts which the truck insists on keeping in so he says it’s like driving on rails. Our neighbor told us several years ago that the previous owner of our place kept large barrels of salt along the driveway so he could salt it. However, the salt killed the vegetation which held the soil in place so when we moved here the driveway was in very bad shape from the erosion. So we don’t use salt. We use shovels instead.

This week I’ve been setting my alarm for 3:25 a.m. to wait for EJ to get safely home. I don’t want him to get stuck in the driveway, to slide off into the valley, or to slip and fall while walking to the house. Once he makes it into the house, we both go to bed. This means that my sleep happens in two parts. Not ideal, but it will only last until more snow covers the ice or until the snow/ice melts. I was hoping to sleep in a little this morning but Timmy the cat started yowling outside the door, probably sometime between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. I translated his yowls as “I’m hungry, feed me NOW.” I tried unsuccessfully to block out his yowls, but finally gave up and fed him.

A few days ago, I was cleaning up the kitchen when suddenly my dishcloth disappeared. I immediately suspected that Hannah took it. She always sneaks things that she knows she’s not supposed to eat onto our bed so I went and looked there, but I didn’t find it. I couldn’t find it anywhere. I even looked in cupboards, in the fridge, in the wastebasket, and other unlikely places just in case I had thoughtlessly put it there while thinking of other things. But it was nowhere. Hannah remained my prime suspect even though I had no evidence. She has a list of priors.

Last night, during EJ’s first and my second sleep, she suddenly started heaving. Both EJ and I leaped up and dragged her off the bed so she wouldn’t barf there. Up came the missing dishcloth. Sigh. Hannah is like a goat: She eats anything and everything. We do our very best to put things where she can’t reach them, but sometimes she eats things we never imagined she would (like full cans of cat food) or she reaches things that we thought she couldn’t (like my dish cloth on the counter). She not only eats things inside the house, but also outside (like animal poop). Her temporary deafness when she doesn’t want to obey and her eating everything is why I keep her on a leash when we go outside.

It was warm today–in the low 40s. But the sky was gray and it also snowed a little. Not enough to cover the ice so my alarm is set for 3:25 a.m.