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OK. So, it snowed. We all know it snowed.
We were pretty much paralyzed during snowmageddon last week. Only those acquaintances who lived or were vacationing in the southern regions were tickled over this precipitation.
My sisters, who live in North Carolina and Georgia, kept texting, “Send us pictures! Send us videos! We miss the snow so much.”
I sent them pictures, but not of snow.
Unless you count my middle finger as an icicle.
Here’s the thing about legitimate snow days when you don’t have children: they suck. I see my cold weather future and it ain’t that bright.
In the milder weather, we’ll be okay, because golf beckons. In snow, Nancy is right underfoot, like a baby learning to crawl. Like a baby who constantly needs food, drink and to expel air from every available orifice. A baby who keeps CNN on all day and all night, even when he’s not in the house. A baby who needs endless tending and nurturing.
He was like a newborn turtle, slow-moving and annoying, but still needed to be entertained and kept warm. Can turtles survive in the snow? That gives me an idea …
Nancy considers golf his exercise for the whole year, so the uber-shoveling almost killed him. He kept throwing snowballs at the kitchen window to get my attention. When I peeked out, he yelled, “Come help me!”
And I pantomimed that I couldn’t hear a thing he was saying.
(You know, the way he plays it every year when I ask him for assistance with outdoor Christmas lights? Karma).
Then I gave him thumbs up and went back to reading my book. I pretended I was working on this column, but I lied.
I don’t care.
He lied the night before when he was “playing darts” with his homies and said he would be home early. Yeah, early the next morning.
Tit for tat, man. Tit for tat.
Shovel away!
He kept coming in for snacks. He said he needed a break or he was going to pass out in that snow and I would never find him.
“Don’t tease me like that!” I said. “By the way … asking for a friend, how much life insurance do you actually have?”
He guzzled his sweet tea, stuffed a few Tastykakes down his gullet and went back outside. I yelled after him, “Really! How much?”
When it was too dark to continue to shovel, or pick-axe, or whatever he was doing out there, he came inside and fell onto the couch. We just looked at each other.
I said, “We need a jigsaw puzzle to pass the time.”
His actual response: “Everyone knows you only do jigsaw puzzles online these days.”
Idiot.
“How about Scrabble, then?”
“Ughhh. Then I would have to, like, spell.”
“Spell this, Nancy … ”
There goes that icicle again. I can barely control it during these snow days.
It’s so sad that we can’t just sit and talk during these times of obligatory togetherness. After 30 years of marriage, maybe we ran out of things to say?
Pathetic.
Or it was until he turned up the volume on CNN and I heard our president’s voice pierce the cold, dense air of my home.
My icicle shattered.
That’s when I decided I needed to go outside and shovel.
Stay warm, people. Stay warm.