Shoveling Out My Inner Snow Angel

6", 9", 12", 14", 27". 
No, this is not a story about awesome penises. 

It's about snow. 
Lots of it.
All month. 
All week. 
All night long. 
Inches and feet and yards of it.
This has been the Northeast. 
More frigid than your ex, feeding a snowcone to a polar bear.

In one week alone, we've all seen the hundreds of pictures of buried walkways, snow entombed barbecue grills, frozen faces, and mammoth white humps enveloping everything from pets to what was once your only means of transportation.

I don't know about you, but I'm happy when there's just enough snow to make a cute little snowball to stuff down someone's pants. Perfectly content. I don't really need to be able to recreate the entire city of Moscow with just the snow surrounding my mailbox, to be happy with winter's offerings. 


But then of course, we have 'those other people'. 
You know, the one's who just can't seem to get enough of it.

We all know at least a few of them. Ever notice when there's a major Nor'easter looming, ready to dump 3 feet plus of paralyzing snow, close schools and bring businesses to a standstill, there's always those giddy-ass snow people who change their Facebook statuses to :

" Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow!!!!" ?

Fair to say the 'psyched it's snowing' faction of people, aren't single moms with high Italian emotions, 200 foot long driveways and a bulging set of spine discs. Nor are they in any capacity, the actual people doing the shoveling of said snow. That's pretty obvious because singing any type of happy song doesn't go together with rearing up, and tossing 46 pound loads of frozen ice over your broken back in 12º weather, 4 hours straight, 5 weeks in a row while snot is secretly running down your socks. 
Hating, and wishing the Northeast dead, to the violent sounds of death metal, is probably more accurate. 

But the reality is, the jolly, chorusing snow people have taught me something very, very valuable; 

'Learn to see the positives'.

That's a great idea.

Hundreds of cars stuck in icy sink holes, fun plans cancelled, backs severed, ankles snapped, cars sliding off the highways and careening into telephone poles, sinking into ditches, on the surface just seem so burdensome. But what they really are are simply unconventional opportunities for joyful expansion. 

Snow storm, after snow storm, after snow storm, are really just enchanting winter experiences. 
It's just a matter of shifting your perspective.
So from here on, I'd like to stay positive and share my focus on the more uplifting particulars of being inconvenienced by snowstorms, and try and bring my complaining about it to a complete halt.

Positive, okay. I know I can do this. 

Well first off, on a superficial note, compared to the snow, I now look much tanner than I had before. So that's a positive. Someone actually asked me today if I was half black. 
But now compared to the snow, my teeth that I used to think were pretty white, look like I spent the week sucking on charcoal briquettes. 
But since I'm on a quest to stay positive, I'll still celebrate the fact that I'm seemingly bronzy, when in reality, in department store lighting in early February, I'm more like the color of jarred mayonnaise.

I've also been blessed with the opportunity to manually dig 6 foot deep, 200 foot long, war trenches and erect snow forts without the threat of an actual war or having to see my friends get blown to pieces. So this is a really positive experience! The only minor inconvenience is just a few useless discs being thrown into permanent misalignment. Nothing that being hunched over for a week without a paycheck or two won't resolve. 

And considering I live in an antisocial town where shooting people and hiding has become rather high on my bucket list, I know this trench building skill will one day become an exceptionally useful skill.

Also, as a result of trying to claw my way out of the house from restlessness, I've stumbled upon a new beautiful shade of crimson. It's called dried blood. Quite lovely, and very much the same color as a ripe pomegranate, so I might end up doing the whole living room in it.

Oh and did I neglect to mention that I feel sexy and alive now that my body is permanently suited up in clothes that look like I'm going on a whale harpooning expedition? 
Well, I do.

And in spite of the fact that I've been suffering from dreaded Cabin Fever, or House Hepatitis (I don't own a cabin), and have periodic bouts of Cardiac Shovelitis, I still always make sure I have time for romance. Being incapacitated by all this snow is no excuse for not seeking out, positive, romantic experiences. Sure, no one can drive here to come see me. But you just need to be willing to make a couple of concessions. Mine have been to date fat, round, white men that have carrots for noses and random decomposing fruit for eyes. Not much better than my usual dates, fyi on that one. So I've even made room in my upright freezer for us to cuddle. 

Further proof that snow immobility and isolation has catapulted my social life in an ascending direction. 

And who would be so foolish as to not appreciate and see the positives of owning a multitude of domesticated, 'grass only', fragile dogs during an Ice Age revisit. 

Currently sequestered to living on a terrain where nothing shy of a herd of Musk Ox could survive, I now see this as a wonderful, serendipitous opportunity for my 3 dogs and I, to truly bond and get to know each other. Maybe curl up on my cozy, wool rugs, that for the past four weeks of this beautiful, magical snowfall, they've consistently relieved themselves on.

See if it weren't for the picturesque, 3 acre wonderland of white snow, caked up to my door handles, I'd never really have the opportunity to know my dogs on the clinical level that I do now, watching them pee on my slipcovers. Or know how much actual shit, a cup and a half of Chicken and Rice kibble actually yields. 
In good weather, I have no way of knowing this. Because normally, those answers are sadly lost outside in the green, sweet smelling grass. But thanks to the giddy snow Gods, I thankfully now do. Once more, the angelic heaping piles of snow have provided me this wonderful rare opportunity to seek out the positives and see nature up close and personal. 

So as well as my cleaning and screaming skills graduating to the next level, I'm also blessed to get a low cost education in Veterinary Gastroenterology. To elaborate on the aforementioned example, I now know that before you pick up dog poop from the rugs, it needs to sit, and air dry say, for approximately 4-6 hours, so that picking it up off the rugs, doesn't mean, smearing it up, off the rugs. Just passing along the many positive data of my Snowed-In-For-A-Month research, people. Wouldn't want to be the only one hoarding all the happiness. 

Meanwhile, back at the carpet lab, after the 4-6 hours, miraculously, the dog poop has aggressively evaporated to nearly half its size, and is now happily bone dry and much akin to a Pompeiinian artifact. And voila. Smear free removal at your disposal. See, unlike Bill Nye The Science Guy, who threw away all his precious years in prestigious colleges around the world, in merely 4-6 hours in my living room, I was able to garner information regarding the oxidation and natural dehydration process of fecal matter, and in succession, simultaneously discovered the fine art of subduing the gag reflex. Thank you oh glorious, low pressure front, winter wonderland, arctic tundra of a fucking backyard. 

Looking forward to 6" more of positivity tomorrow.

So, "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow".

;)

~dawn

The 12 Hams Of Christmas

It's Christmas time, and UPS is here. Again.

I open the door, and  drag in an obscenely large, cold, cardboard box.

On it reads: 

To: Dawn, Justin and Derek

From: Dad

Derek: "Ooooooooooooooooh mommy what is it???!!!!"

Me: "It's a ham".

Derek: "How do you know?"

Me: "It's a ham."

Derek: "Yeah but you didn't even open …"

Me: "It's a ham. A very large, ham Derek. I get it every year. This year I'm strapping it into a baby seat and driving it to the needy. I hear they're in desperate need of warm blankets and ham."

Derek: "Cant we just open it and see if…"

Me: "Ham, Derek … Ham."

Every Christmas, without fail, my dad sends me a ham. And I'm not really sure I should say "without fail", because between me and you, no one eats it. Generally, we graffiti it with expletives and submit it to the Museum of Modern Art.

Two months after the invasion of the Thanksgiving turkey, as we're still picking out turkey from between our teeth … here comes our new roommate, the Here -Til '-August, Christmas ham. 

It's a ham so colossal, that upon its arrival, warrants me to begrudgingly rearrange the contents of my already packed refrigerator, like a failed attempt at a Rubix cube, just for it to eventually not fit in.

Where the hell is The Hamburgler when you need him.

Funny thing is, I really want to appreciate this ham. I really do. And I think I did…the first 11-14 years I received it. But for starters, I don't eat ham. Oddly enough, for some reason, receiving this poor innocent ham every year like clockwork, has touched a nerve so deep that I actually considered throwing it out. 

But after looking at it again and thinking..."Where's the wheels?"…I realized I'd probably end up throwing my back out instead.

Plan B: Maybe I can just shot-put it into the woods. After all, raccoons need Christmas gifts, too. Rabies alone isn't festive enough. 

Ham Hostility. That's even a new one for me. So where is it coming from. 

Well, hard to believe something like a Priority Mail Nueske's Ham can prompt some type of poignant discovery in myself, but so it had. 

I realized I wasn't mad at the actual ham at all. 

That would be psychotic. And just because I yell at and flip off hams doesn't make me psychotic.

Turns out that it's not that I don't appreciate the gesture of cute little dead farm animals being sent to my front door, it's not that at all.

It's more because … (organ sound) … I'm mad that my dad doesn't call me enough to know that I don't eat ham. At least not the amount of ham that by code requires me to start working on blueprints for a guest room addition. 

Instead of a call, I get a giant, impersonal ham. His way of letting me know that he, unlike the ham, is not dead.

Upon that discovery, unlike the Grinch on Christmas Eve whose heart grew 3x too big, 

like a pair of all cotton underwear in the dryer for too long, my heart shrank 10x too small. 

Mad at the ham because I never see my dad?
No. The ham represents the dad I never see.
Genius.

A strangely epiphanic moment, all whilst the backdrop of air hung heavily with the scent of pork.

I'd so much rather see my dad than this stupid, hulking ham which he's obviously under the impression that I need in my life more than a dad. 

Could it be that he sends it because it's metaphoric of baby Jesus being born, and will be with me eternally? Maybe that's why it's swaddled with sections of cotton gauze. Although that could be cheesecloth for basting. I'm not really sure. But whatever the case, like Christ, it's certainly omnipotent.

I could even possibly forgive the ham if it were delicious, and not so dry from flying around from state to state, accumulating frequent flyer miles in the cargo section of an airplane. But as it stands, it's so dry that instead of kindling, I use it to start a nice ambient fire on Christmas day. When my dad asks me if I roasted the ham, I just say "yes". So it works out nicely.

And God Forbid I should be so blunt as to say:

…"Dad. Really. You need to stop with the ham."

I don't hear from him now, can't imagine if I insulted his annual ham. That'd be grounds for 1 phone call a year, versus the current symmetrical 2.

So it ends up looking more like this:

Me: "Oh hi dad, thanks so much for the ham! I told you last year, and the year before, and the year before that, that you really, really, did NOT need to be so generous and send us a 46 lb. ham again. But thank you. So nice of you. And since you did, I'll make sure to make some ham and cheese quiches, and split pea with ham soup, ham sandwiches for the kids, and green eggs and ham. Thank you!"***

*** Lies. I cut it into cubes and divvied it up to my dogs for the past 3 years. But I was thinking of you the whole time.

Last year, since the ham was caked in 30 lbs. of ice, after the painful workout I endured from dragging it in, I needed to rest my feet on something so I used the ham for 4 months as a biodegradable ottoman.

I always wanted an ottoman for Christmas.

This year, I call my dad…

Me: " Hi dad it's Dawn. Omg when was the last time you called me, whoops! Meant, 'Merry Christmas', and thanks for sending the ham. I'm waiting for some friends to come over so they can help me lift it onto the counter."

Dad: "Oh good…it got there already? " 

Me: " Yeah Dad, asteroids travel pretty fast … Dad that ham is so big, it'd be the first thing I'd throw off a sinking ship. Yep, got here yesterday! I'd put it on the phone to say hi, but it's in the middle of holding up my house at the moment."

Me:  "Dad, seriously. I love you, but next year, save yourself some money…that's a LOT of ham. Unless I cut it up and give it to all my dogs, which I'd never do, there's no way we can all eat this before it goes bad."

Dad:  "That's OK. The kids I'm sure will eat it."

Me: "Dad, it's almost impossible for them to eat it while I'm resting my feet on it."

Okay fine.

I know he means well. I'm over it. I got it off my chest. I'm not mad at him nor his ham, nor Mr. Nueske's entire family anymore.

I'll just continue coming up with new inventions for it every year, as well as continue to jam it into the fridge, muscle the refrigerator door closed, and walk away reprehending it under my breath like I would a kid sent to his room for peeing into a wall socket.

Moral of the Story:

Ham is not a replacement for real love or genuine communication during the holidays.

Chocolate dipped cookies and Frosted Cakes are.

Get with it dad.

Merry Christmas

& 

Bah Hambug.

:)

~dawn

How To Properly Prepare A Human for Thanksgiving Dinner.

1.  Start out by making a list of a bunch of humans you'd never want all in the same room at the same time, and then proceed to invite each and every one of them to your Thanksgiving dinner.

2.  Resign yourself to gorging from Thanksgiving until New Years Eve, when at that point, you will stoically join a gym, go for 2 weeks, and never return, ever again. 

3.  Thanksgiving morning: Wake up. Grunt something about "...fucking traffic".

4. Remove 9 years worth of clothing off of home treadmill in an attempt to find it for rumored post Thanksgiving workout.

5. Once shower water reaches 82º, wash human thoroughly under soapy running water.

6.  Remove any stray facial, ear, chin, nose, tongue hair that might cause human to human revulsion during Thanksgiving dinner.

7.  Carefully drape the body in clothes or circus tent that can successfully hide your soon to be, deteriorating physical state. 

8.  Transfer expensive, store-bought, world renowned bakery desserts into shitty household tupperware as to create the illusion of your baking skills and abundant Thanksgiving efforts.

9.  Simmer in traffic for 3-17 hours or until brain is tender enough to shoot anyone even looking in your direction. If you haven't done this, you haven't sat in traffic long enough, and must go back and repeat this process or Thanksgiving just isn't the same.

10.  Female humans: Spend roughly 1-4 hours rehashing and carefully dissecting every potential jab made at you at last years Thanksgiving dinner, and the year before, for no reason other than, it feels good.

11. Spend additional 3 hour car ride to dinner, berating your husband or spouse for claiming he didn't pick up on any of it.

12. To better prepare a human for inevitable snarky comments at table, 

carefully go over your "what if she says this…what if he says that" lists in the car ride over there. 

13. Always arrive on time, with homemade food, wine, flowers and a smile on your face. And half trashed if you can.

14. Upon arrival, pickle brain promptly with approximately 1/2 gallon of alcoholic beverage of your choice, to help diminish Thanksgiving awareness.

15. Look for something resembling a cornucopia, raise to lips. Pretend you're the dude from the Ricola commercial playing the Flugalhorn. Clean up fruit from floor.

16. Set timer for about 35 minutes; Time how long it will take for that one predictable asstard that's destined to try and impress us with his/her factual knowledge about the sleep inducing affects of the Tryptophan in turkey.

17. For proper digestion and retention of ones utensils, do not talk about Obama anything.

18. Lie about the hosts ability to retain the moistness and juiciness of turkey despite your Ginsu steak knife, your saliva, and 32 gnashing teeth not being able to break it down. 

19. Take unbearable friend or family members ass measurements to see if they'll comfortably fit in your oven for next years Thanksgiving dinner.

20. Be gracious and express gratitude toward people who contributed all the delicious food on the table. To all others whose food wasn't swallowable, point rudely at them and giggle.

21.  To guarantee the prompt elimination of oneself and/or visiting additional human families at the end of the night, in replace of egg nog, drink 12 raw eggs to spur on Salmonella poisoning. 

22. Take note of how annoying and misbehaved all kids are when they're not your own annoying, misbehaved kids.

23. Prepare human for dessert by discreetly unbuttoning pants while no one is looking. Refluff  shirt.

24. Using a hot oil thermometer, test gravy temperature to see if dumping it on someones lap is even worth it.

25. Observe droves of women toiling in the kitchen and the man clusters half asleep all over the couches. Observe.

26. To prevent calories and fat from adhering to stomach and thighs, eliminate plates and forks, eat cake and pastries directly from box. This is female-verified scientific data.

27. Go to the bathroom. 

28. Lift up shirt. Assess damage.

30. Stuff towels under door crack to muffle screams.

31. Be truly thankful for all your wonderful family members and friends. 

32. Walk quietly and classily toward your car. Close car door.  Start verbally throwing some people under a bus.

32.  Forgo cell phone game apps and instead spend the ride home playing connect the dots with your new cellulite dimples to pass the time.

33. Stare at brake lights. Curse turkeys.

34. Get home, go to your bedroom and pass out*****. 

*****Actually, did I ever tell you why you'll be extra sleepy and pass out ? Well, it's not because you're just full. It's mostly because turkey meat has these really high levels of this sleep inducing chemical in it that is naturally produced in our own bodies to help induce sleep. I'm not sure if you've ever heard of it. It's called tryptophan. 

:)~

~dawn 

Raising Your Own Backyard Pig

   

9 dirty socks, 8 empty, crushed bottles of Poland Spring, 7 multi colored sticky guitar picks, 6 wrinkled, stained t-shirts, 5 blankets, on the floor of course, keeping a 5 week old dried doody log company, 4 drinking glasses fused to the nightstand, 3 crusty forks, 2 empty family size bags of Doritos, an empty, archival container of chicken... or pudding, hard to tell, and probably 1 dead partridge somewhere, which I assume used to live in some sickly, withering pear tree.

This is my sons room. Well, not the picture above, but that's what it feels like. Walmart's Day After Christmas Sale.
(The anal retentive in me had to make sure you knew that.)

However, I think it's safer to assume that canoeing through the Amazon river, sans malarial shots, is less deadly than it is to embark upon a seedy journey into my son's room to change a lightbulb. Whatever the deal, I'm sure I should've called the CDC before I volunteered for helping out with something this categorically cootified.

In nature, there's a fascinating bird called the Bowerbird. The male Bowerbirds collect and artfully arrange color and object specific collections to attract a mate. And the males with the most spectacular displays in their lairs, win the female. The collections are varied things ranging from piles of nuts, heaps of specific flowers, piles of dead beetles, heaps of deer shit, and even color coordinated garbage. It's a trait fascinating for a bird from Papua New Guinea. And a borderline repulsive / heave worthy trait if you're a human. If my sons lair were the basis for any long standing relationship, it would only attract the head custodian of a hazardous waste removal company, a senior archeologist, or a herd of protozoologists. You shouldnt need tongs to clean a bedroom.

I'll try and give you a better visual: If his room were the first thing you saw when you opened the door to your house, you'd immediately smack the security alarm button, and call the cops because you'd think your house was ransacked by an irate band of bat wielding meth addicts that had a particular hankering for 2 week old ham and cheese sandwiches during their heist. And then you'd find the nearest shovel, pick it up and swing it around every blind corner you turned, hoping to bring whoever did this to their knees.

I'm a little nicer than that. I don't use a shovel. But I'd be lying if I said yelling with flailing arms, and a cattle prodder weren't involved.

A total pig sty. I have to say 'pig sty' because thats what my mom always called it, so for nostalgic reasons, filthy room must under all circumstances, equal "pig sty". I've never really hung out in an authentic pig sty, but I can promise you this; there's no loose leaf binders stuck to the walls there. And about the dried dog poop on the floor that I found-- pigs will at least eat shit. My son just leaves it there waiting for the fine art of disintegration to show us how it's done.

So on second thought, it's not like a pig sty at all, It's more like the 'after' scene of a Fall Out shelter, where someone forgot to install the door.

Bottom line is, unless you enjoy the sensation of deli meat caressing your scalp, laying on the remnants a 3 day old turkey sandwich is not an acceptable substitute for a pillow.

I guess the ability to live amongst viruses and newly unearthed species of cream colored fungi are one of those teenage milestones I just have to get used to. But how could it not bother him. You'd think that rolling over to go to sleep, and crushing nachos with your ear, or pulling up a blanket, but not being able to, because the gum and soda you spit out 6 weeks ago has welded the sheets to floorboards, would force upon him some type of personal intervention. I'm sure this is how the first Glue Trap was invented. Walking barefoot onto a teenage boys bedroom floor. Then I think, eh, stop complaining. At least it's still just gum. Innocent, little fruit scented gum. I seriously dread the day that used condoms become part of the harvest.

Thankfully, he does shower every day and spends more time coifing his coif than Justin Beiber ever did.
But showering is clearly his ploy to make his friends think that his cleanliness factor somehow infuses the rest of his life as well. And that he doesnt fall asleep on Village Bagels # 6 sandwich. Well ladies, let it be known that this cleanliness ends as soon as the last bubble encapsulating his filth goes down the shower drain. The waterlogged towels are thrown to the ground, where his wet, stanky clothes will lay for days, mulching into crop fertilizer.

So once more for clarity purposes: The showers are merely to fool the women. Not THIS woman, of course. The other ones. The ones who dont have to blow torch his underwear off the floor.

Now I don't expect a 12 or a 9 year old boy to have the same level of fastidiousness as their slightly anal retentive, moderately OCD, stain removing, rug cleaning, toilet scrubbing, sink bleaching, laundry doing, stink removing house maid of a mom does, who showers three times a day, periodically gives the vacuum cleaner attachments herbal baths, and rearranges the magazines so they stack in the proper descending color spectrum.

But I do expect him to know that when the sheets crack, it's time to wash them.

I finally decide I can't do it anymore. I walk into his room to make my last plea for cleanliness, but wearing socks now for protection. We make a truce. Sign peace treaties. Chest bump. And I walk out. I feel a cool breeze on my feet. I look down and see my socks are missing. I turn back and see that I walked out of my socks, because they're stuck to his bedroom floor. Stuck to the floor like 2 dead war flags waving in the toxic wind. Symbolic of my futile efforts.

So before I fall victim to some rare airborne e coli saprophyte, I'd like to extend an early apology: In the event of there being a sudden resurgence of the Bubonic Plague, or some other virus where your skin and appendages melt off and my kids indirectly wipe out your entire family, I'm truly sorry. I tried. I really, really did.