I've had it up to here with this snow

This morning while driving to work, I had time to think about the meaning of life.

I had this time because the car in front of me was driving ten miles an hour and I was first in a ever elongating line of festering road rage.

The car was driving ten miles an hour because it snowed last night.

The roads were clear, but this guy/girl/asexual moron had left most of the 4+ inches of snow on his car.  He (a pronoun I will use because it makes me think all is right with the world, although I confess that I don’t know if the driver was male, female, or alien) had cleaned off a rectangle of about 3 inches by 5 inches right in front of his face.

Even at 10 mph, I was the only person for miles who was forced to drive to work in white-out conditions.  Meanwhile, the crackpot in front of me was leaning over the steering wheel scanning the roads through the small opening in the windshield.

I suppose I shouldn’t begrudge the guy too much.  I hate scraping windows.  When I had to do it, I cursed every minute of it and I swore that I’d have a garage.  And not one of those garages that people never put their cars in…a real garage that used for what it is supposed to be used for.  I have a garage, but I didn’t have a great morning.

The morning I had made me even more pissed off about the guy who was too lazy to brush the extra snow off his windshield instead of hoping defrost would take care of the 4 inches….or maybe his perspective on four inches was off (more circumstantial evidence that this driver is a guy, they’re often, in my experience, unable to judge inches properly).

My morning started with a snow plow.  Well technically that’s not correct.  It started with a dog barking at the yellow flashing lights going through the house.

At 2 am.

Thank you snow plow driver for being thorough and going up and down the street five or six times. Because I might have been able to go back to sleep after one barking frenzy.  Oh and thank you more for coming back at 5 am and making the run down the street again.  I’d just gotten back to sleep.

So at 5am, I’m up.  I pull on some old sweats to let the dog out of her crate and take her out.  The dog was halfway to the door when the cat knocks the lamp off the end table.  There’s a flash of white light, the fleeting thought that those stupid spiral bulbs are filled with mercury, and then total blackness.

The cat charges off down the hall, the dog thunders after her.

I move cautiously through the darkness and turn on another light, stepping on a rawhide bone which scrapes up the bottom of my foot and makes me scream. 

Yeah, I scream and the dog is more interested in chasing the cat.  I could be attacked by the Manson family and the dog couldn’t care less.  She’s got the cat trapped in the bedroom.

So I clean up the glass and fix the lamp, then get the dog outside.  I’m out with her.  I have a fenced in yard, but when there’s snow on the ground, the dog prefers to play and I need to stand outside to make sure she remembers what she’s there for.

I’m standing out there, in the dark.  Trying to close my eyes and take a standing up cat nap, when I become aware that the dog is having an unusually fun time and the tennis balls are inside.

I squint in the darkness, not wanting to open my eyes completely lest they be frozen in the frigid air.

The dog is throwing something white up in the air, jumping on it when it hits the snow and throwing it back up.

Snow doesn’t act like that, I think, trying to figure out what she has.

The dog notices my eye contact and runs over to me with her white toy –

 OH DEAR MOTHER OF GOD!!!

She’s got my granny panties from the hamper in the bedroom.

I reach out to grab them the dog jumps back.  Her head goes down, her butt sticks up in the air, cropped tail whipping back and forth so fast, her entire ass might take flight at any minute.

“Maggie, DROP!” I command, trying to keep the hysteria and panic out of my voice.  I reach forward to grab my granny panties.

Maggie runs away, my pants dangling in her mouth, she looks over her shoulder to make sure I’m following. 

“Maggie.  Drop!”

She runs at me, then passed me before I can catch her.  She bounces around butt up again, head down, eyes looking into mine, my underwear in her mouth.

At this time I should pause and mention that I’ve lost some weight recently.  My old clothes are too big.  I make a lunge for the dog.

She lunges for me.  Seventy pounds of playing Rottweiler puppy.

I take a step back. 

In a freak accident, the heal of my boot catches on the cuff of my sweats. 

The motion of my body pulls the sweats easily off my hips.

It’s 6 degrees out.

I’m in my underwear.

My dog has another pair of underwear that she’s tossing up in the air like a juggling act.

My sweats pool around my ankles.

My boot is still caught in the cuff.

I fall.

Backwards.

In the 4+ inches of snow.

Wearing only my underwear.

The dog thinks this is fun.  She gets to close.

Now we’re playing tug-o-war with my underwear in the snow and I’m slowly freezing to death.  There’s snow on my butt cheeks.

And I still manage to get my ass up and retrieve the ripped fragments of my dignity from the dog and change clothes again, and go out front to shovel the drive way.  And be on my way to work.

Only to be stuck behind some guy who didn’t even bother to scrape off his entire windshield.

When he stops at the light, I grab my scrapper.  Throw my car in park.  I march up to his car.

It IS a guy.  He looks at me from behind the ice shield covering the driver’s side window.  He’s wearing mittens and a fuzzy hat that covers his ears and one of those bubble jackets.  He’s got a big steaming travel mug filled with coffee in his car.  I think he’s frickin’ sweating.

His eyes are big and round as he stares at the long brush and scrapper in my hand.

I can see myself in the reflection of the ice because the sun is coming out, glistening over the fresh looking snow covering his stupid foreign car.  I’m gripping a blue scrapper two thirds the length of my arm with a bare fist, knuckles white, fingers already bluish.  I forgot my gloves because I was running a little late this am.  There’s a crazed look in my eye.  The wind is tossing my hair around my face.  I am not smiling.

I raise the scrapper.

The man leans back, his mouth opens.  He struggles to take off his mittens…a hand warmer pack falls out.

I stare at it for a moment.

He fumbles for his cell phone.

I lean over the front of his car and use the brush snow into his little port hole, blinding him.

I walk slowly back to my car.

The light turns green, but doofus can’t see that.  And he’s afraid to come out of his Honda hybrid.  I pull around him.

Hell, he doesn’t even know what color my car is.  He’s never seen it; can’t see it.

The cars that had lined up behind me, follow.  It’s like a parade.  I imagine the drivers behind me cheering in their cars as we resume normal speed.  Puffs of breath forming in the air in front of them.

I can imagine the cops showing up.  Finding one guy.  Warm.  Toasty.  Waiting for them.  I can’t imagine they’re going to be too happy about being called out in the cold to find someone who maximized their time in the warmth with sheer laziness.

“Did you see the woman’s car?” No, I couldn’t see anything.  “Did you get the license plate when she pulled in front of you?” No, she buried me alive! “Did she say anything to you.”  Nothing.   But I think I heard her mumble something about having snow up her ass and having to deal with a jackass.