Broken Hearts, Broken Jokes, and Broken Snow Drifts

No need for a trip out to the cemetery this week; the Vikings did what they do best: they broke our collective Minnesotan hearts. Not just broke them....those would-be gladiators ripped them right outta our chests and stomped the little buggers into mush. That wasn't a game; it was a shondeh, a travesty, a complete and total embarrassment. That said, it means Ziggy is still where Ziggy is supposed to be, not clawing his way to the surface to get to the Stupid Bowl. Had he been here watching that debacle, things would've flown through that horrid big screen TV that dominated our family room. 'Nuf said.

On to bigger and better (?) things: SNOW.

It used to snow like this when went I went to Skidmore in the Adirondacks. It used to snow like this when we lived in Poughkeepsie in the Catskills. But I don't remember snow like this in the middle of winter for a really long time in Minnesota. It's not Minnesota Winter snow. This is more like Minnesota March snow: wet, heavy, clingy, heart-attack inducing. I am so glad I didn't have to deal with this at the old house. I'd be out there with the snowblower, loving every noisy minute of it while thinking I'm way too old to be out there soaked to the skin through layers and layers of winter gear. 

I'm parked  nose out, wipers up.

The weather was cloudy but okay this morning. As I left minyan for work, there was a flake here, a flake there, nothing much to bother with. By noon, it was a different story. Looking out the office window, I was breathing a sigh of relief that I had the foresight to park nose out.  I was glad I put the wipers in their locked and upright position. By 3 o'clock, you could no longer see the road that runs along our parking lot. I didn't dare go look out the other side where I-494 heads toward the airport. Speaking of airport, we're in the flight path and things were eerily silent overhead.

One side dug out. See how clean my car is!
It sparkles!

By the time I left at 5:30, people were digging out and getting stuck in the parking lot. The snow had compacted onto the driver-side of the car to a depth of about a foot, more on top on the car. The passenger-side was almost clear. It took me about 20 minutes to clear enough snow to make driving legal. I could see out the windshield and the front side windows. The defroster on the rear was doing a bang-up job. When I sat down, the seat was warm. No complaints there.

my footprints

I managed to get stuck and freed trying to go up our drifted-in communal driveway, and ended up parking out front off to the side where I figured I was less likely to be hit, and slogged my way to the front door. When I finally heard our plow guy, I suited up, marched through drifts over the tops of my barn boots (yeah, still wearing the same ones) up past my knees to flag him down.  I point to the car, he plowed a little path for me to get out, and I was able to get up the driveway to the garage, only to be greeted by a 4' snow drift against my wall. Undaunted...and believing the power of the Rogue, I blasted right through it and slid gently into the garage. Thrilled to discover I still had a snow shovel, I  set to digging out enough of the drift so I would be able to get out in the morning, make it to minyan, and start all over again.

And if that was not enough excitement for one night, the drift dispatched, I went into the house to throw the sacred sweatshirt collection in the dryer...which vents into the garage and will melt the rest of the snow on top of the car...only realize I locked myself out. 

This is one of those make-or-break moments, when you can either have a total meltdown while you're standing there in wet socks and no coat....or you can take a deep breath and remember you put a spare key in the traditional family hiding place so this moment would be no big whoop. It was there, crisis averted with only a minor oops. Like the Vikings. Not a big deal in the greater scheme of things.

In that greater scheme, there's stuff out there right now that's larger than the snow drifts. Snow eventually melts; it does go away. It's a nuisance, but it's temporary. The bigger scheme, however, continues to be the never-ending prestidigitation and necromancy as performed by the Oval Office Company. Their basic assumption that we are too stupid to notice flies in the farce of statements like "Covfefe" and his latest impenetrable statement on the rights of the unborn:

Right now, in a number of states, the laws allow a baby to be born from his or her mother’s womb in the ninth month. It is wrong. It has to change.                                                                                                                   (January 19th, 2018)

Change to what? C-sections for all? Yeah, yeah, we all know he was trying to talk about late-term abortion, but even the few facts he had were so far from reality it's hard not to take that statement seriously. Of course, he will claim the lame-stream media is making this up, just like they made up him saying:

A shutdown falls on the President’s lack of leadership. He can’t even control his party and get people together in a room. A shutdown means the President is weak.                                         (On Obama's shutdown in 2013)

But they didn't, he said this stuff, and the jokes are, as usual, on him. If anyone believes what comes out of his mouth or twitching fingers, they deserve him.

Y'know, the jokes stopped being funny a while ago. Today, he slapped a 30% tariff on imported solar panels. I get the "Made in America" part; in fact, I supported that position for a very long time. But those jobs that went overseas do not instantly materialize on these shores because someone wishes they would. There is a process to bring them back, and a 30% tariff is not going to stimulate that industry. Who, exactly, is that punishing?  

I'll tell you: people who wish to be ecologically responsible. He is punishing people for disagreeing with his pseudo-science. 

I swear to G-d, his role model is Stalin. Every day, he sounds more and more like Joe. Go read some Joe Stalin quotes. You'll figure it out. Just to get you started, here are a couple of my personal faves:

Life has improved, comrades. Life has become more joyous. (November 1935)

The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do.

I don't know about you, dear readers, but I rarely think of joyous and Stalin in the same context. Such a friendly lookin' guy.

Folks, this is what a scheme looks like: It's premeditated, it's planned out, and it's executed in such a way that while you're looking for the pink elephants the flashing neon sign said you'd see if you look to the right, your civil rights, your national parks, and your compassion are being sold to the highest bidder on the left. 

I think I'll go fold laundry.

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

For fluffy sweatshirts, wash them inside out

and dry them the same way on low heat.