Idaho is tough on your hands. Temperatures were mostly in the 20's for a week and it was dry, dry, dry. Winter clothes, like the wool and the cashmere, require hand washing, or dry cleaning that I can't afford, so last weekend I caught up on all the hand washing. There were sweaters hanging all over the house and after washing a few my hands were red and cracked. A few paper cuts and an accidental stabbing with the mat knife and my poor hands were a wreck.
A woman at work told me stories of cars in minus 20 degree weather. This was somewhere in Nevada, her Honda's tires froze to the driveway and the car would not move and the T-Bird just plain froze to itself and the doors would not open. Then they bought a full size four wheel drive truck and left the window cracked open. That worked.
Another woman at work has a '74 Duster. It's a muscle car in the original rusty red with white racing stripes down the sides. My brother inherited my grandmother's Duster in 1981. It had to have been at least a few years old and not only was it a grandma car, it was rusting out on the underside from driving in the snow in Indiana. It is amazing to me how this car went from a muscle car to a grandma car in just a few years. My brother hated that car and still holds it against me like I got something better, but I paid for half of my '76 Mustang II, that's another car that completely deteriorated during the 70's, from classic to junk.
My second attempt at a Christmas tree in Idaho is not much better than last year's. I had trouble keeping the blue spruce in it's pot alive during September and October, then it perked up for November when it got cold, now I have it decorated on my front porch, but the dirt in the pot is frozen so it is hard to water and some of the branches are curling. I figured I could not bring it inside, it is too dry, so I just put lights on it and a few unbreakable not-worth-stealing ornaments. It might make it to Christmas, but then I don't know what I am going to do with it. It was still cheaper than buying a living tree, the small Charlie Brown trees at Fred Meyer were $20, as much as I paid for the spruce. I never put up the Christmas lights, I missed Thanksgiving weekend when it was warm enough, but since then it has been too darn cold.
My pants came from LL Bean. Imagine trying on pants that have been sitting in a plastic bag on your 20 degree porch all day. Brrrr. The lined running pants were frosty to put on, but they warmed right up when I got them on. They were too long and had a rubber band around the inside hem, which must be to keep them from ridding up while you are running in the cold, but I wasn't going to have that problem, since they were three inches too long already. Three extra inches and rubber was going to be too much to bunch around my ankles. Too bad, they were really warm.
I can shave in the shower, but I tried standing naked in the bathroom with hair removal cream in the cold waiting the required 5 minutes. That was a cold, long five minutes. I think farm girls are excused from hair removal for winter.
The cats continue to be confused by the weather. Last year it was white out, it looked wrong and they would not go out. Now it looks alright, but they go out and come right back inside. An hour later they think maybe something is different, hey the sun is out and it is green, and try again. I moved the table back under the front window to deflect the heat from the floor vent underneath into the room. This makes that table pretty warm and I usually catch Spit sitting there looking for her boyfriend, Pierre. That is when Cruiser is not using it to stare down Pierre, who now when he shows up is terrorizing Cruiser from the front window.
Since Thanksgiving, everyone has been driving like idiots. What is it about the holidays and driving? It is bad everywhere, like some kind of universal truth. First you have the ones that must not drive at all during the entire year, but get out to do some Christmas shopping, now we have all those angry drivers in a hurry. I drove to Fed-Ex near the mall after work and followed this guy in a truck almost the whole way. Twice while we were waiting for a light to change, he opened his door to spit on the road. What is it that compels a man to need to spit right now, can't wait? I have not seen that in a long time. I left work early the day before to go to the post office and missed an accident right outside my work. It was a girl on a cell phone, pulled out making a left turn and an oncoming van just missed her, but the car that the girl on a cell phone could not see, because her view was blocked by the van, did.
Maybe it was that bright full moon, or maybe holiday tension, or maybe holidays with no snow, but everyone at work was in a crabby mood this week. The office Christmas lunch was Tuesday and I did not go. I don't really like those things when they are outside of the office. I heard the mood was bad, but the food was really good. They brought some food back in Styrofoam containers, but when I went to check them out, someone was sampling a bit from each container, they were different foods, with their fingers. Standing in the way, just a bit from each one. I wasn't hungry anyway.
The used to be pregnant girl at work gave me one of her extra converter boxes and last night I bought an HD antenna. I now have local TV in high definition and I am thrilled that it is free! I looked at HD TVs while I was at Best Buy and I'm thinking no one needs a big screen anymore, the picture is so clear. A guy at work was watching a movie on his phone and I asked him how he could even see anything on such a small screen and he showed me the picture. It was pretty amazing how much I could see in a 2 inch by 3 inch screen. I am now dreaming about a new 32 inch HD TV, not so much because of the picture, but because of the size. My TV today seems like more and more of a monstrosity taking up half of the room. Sometimes that TV feels like a giant symbol of excess from the days when I used to have money.
Yesterday I drove home from work and it was a toasty 39 degrees. Believe me, 39 feels warm after a week in the 20s. Now we are looking at a week with highs in the low 40s, but still no snow in sight.
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