The white stuff
People talk about Winter Blues. I have the Winter Whites (not ivory, cream, and eggshell). I’m referring to snow. I’m done with the white stuff for January.
I’ve shoveled my driveway for the last 10 days in a row. The pathway to my house has been salted more than all the pretzels in Hanover, PA.
Side note: Utz brand and Snyder’s of Hanover (duh) brand pretzels are both made in Hanover, Pa. Hanover is the Snack Food Capital of the World!
But I digress, like I do. Snow is beautiful when you’re inside looking out the window. My favorite way to view snow is Claude Monet’s “Magpie.” It’s a wintry painting of a black bird sitting on the fence of a snow-covered farmhouse in Normandy, France. I adore looking at it – preferably in a museum – in June.
The people who like snow must not have to shovel it. It’s all the shoveling and the scraping that I don’t like.
Back when I was living in California, I remember cleaning out my car and finding my ice scraper. I laughed at the long blue plastic device and chucked it in the trash.
Several years after I moved back to Pittsburgh, I remember scraping ice off my car with a CD case, R.E.M.’s “Green” album.
While living in California, I had one coat. Now, I have 14 (not including hoodies and various pullovers). I have a coat for every temperature: breezy, light rain, heavy rain, snow, heavy snow, and frozen tundra. There are days when I have more gear on than Neil Armstrong wore while walking on the moon. I look like the Michelin Man, but I’m still cursing at the clouds.
When people say, “I love the Four Seasons,” I say, “I saw ‘Jersey Boys,’ twice!”
(People who read my theater reviews over at ‘Burgh Vivant will get that.)
Living here does make me glad I don’t live in Erie, or any city with “The Lake Effect.”
I like the snow when I’m in the mountains, getting ready to go tubing, skiing, or snowmobiling. I think I just don’t like getting up at 5 a.m. to shovel snow and scrape ice from my car so I can be downtown by 9.
The worst is coming home in a sudden squall. Last week, I enjoyed two whole podcasts on my way home from work, because it took an hour longer than usual. I got to play my least favorite game, “Will I get out of downtown traffic before I run out of gas?”
In case you are wondering, there are no gas stations in downtown Pittsburgh. The nearest one is on the Northside. Conveniently, they sell fried chicken and wigs as well. That’s wigs, as in “on your head,” not wings, as in “part of a chicken.”
In case you were wondering, I didn’t eat chicken or try on a wig when I filled my tank, but I have been wondering what I would look like as a blond.