Shovel, scrape. swear, repeat
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I may have the winter blues, or I’m actually turning blue from the cold. I’m blue either way. I’m at that point in the year when I go outside and shovel the driveway, scrape ice off my car and curse. That’s basically all I’m going to be doing ’til mid-March: shovel, scrape, swear and repeat.
Don’t get me wrong. I think the snow is pretty – on a postcard or in a painting. I’m not a fan of it when it’s in my face, freezing the hair in my nostrils.
Icicles formed on my eyebrows; I’m so done.
Last year, I was enjoying 80-degree weather, possibly even warmer. Converting Celsius to Fahrenheit is complicated. I walked around in shorts.
I didn’t just wear them ironically, like every college kid in Target on a snow day. I’m not the “wears shorts when it’s 10 below because I’m too cool for long pants” type. I’m the “cover every inch of skin in case the cold kills me” type. I look like the Michelin Man with glasses.
At this time last year, I was in Australia. It was summer then, and it’s summer again there. February and March in Australia are like July and August except they still call them February and March, which is really confusing. They have summer in the winter and vice versa.
It’s also tomorrow there right now, but they don’t have the same lottery numbers so it doesn’t matter.
But I digress, like I do. I am fondly reminiscing about my vacation. My last trip before Lockdown. It was practically the last time I left the house, and it was halfway across the world. I went from globe-hopping to forced confinement.
In retrospect, I was lucky to get back from Down Under when I did. The pandemic reached maximum fright zone when my plane landed last March.
Two days after I got back from Australia, Tom Hanks came down with COVID-19 from working in a film in Australia. People asked me if I had any contact with Tom Hanks while I was there.
I wanted to say, “Yeah, Rita, Tom and I went to Stalactites, a Greek restaurant in Melbourne.”
I did go to Stalactites in Melbourne, but Rita and Tom didn’t come with me. Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t invite them. I didn’t need them breathing their COVID germs on my tzatziki.
The main reason I didn’t invite Tom and Rita to dinner is because I never met them, but I do know that Rita loves Greek food (thanks, People Magazine).
To be fair, Tom and Rita were on the other side of the continent. I was in Melbourne, Sydney and Cairns (swimming with sea turtles in the Great Barrier Reef).
I am reminiscing fondly about my vacation Down Under now that I’m Up Above.
I’m a little sad because I went from saying fun Aussie slang like “tough as a woodpecker’s lips,” to “Alexa, turn the heat up.”
Seriously. Alexa, turn the heat up.