Il neige! Il neige!

Actually, we haven’t had that much yet, only about 4 or 5 very blowy, drifty inches. But it’s coming down pretty quickly. Nutcracker rehearsals, mercifully, are cancelled, but the Red Mill School Christmas Breakfast and Crafts Fair Extravaganza (or whatever they actually call it) was not, so Lee bundled up the kids and trudged down to the school — seemed safer than driving at the time. I took the chance to do some of that quarterly kitchen cleaning stuff, like the burner pans and all the parts of the toaster oven. Orange Power Paste does wonders on burner pans and refrigerator door handles, I’m here to tell you.

So, now we’re all stuck in the house. Hmmm…. Actually, while other people were apparently (per the news channel) panicking in the direction of the grocery store, I was panicking in the direction of the video store. I never let the food supplies get so low that we can’t weather a storm for a day or two, but I really needed to see some new entertainment if we’re going to be stuck here. My current favorite entertainment, actually, is the Playstation 2 version of Grand Theft Auto III, marked down to $15 at the Target. Good game. Totally inappropriate for the kids to see me playing, however, what with all the shooting and the blood and the hookers. So that means I can only play it when they’re in bed and Lee doesn’t want to watch something, which doesn’t leave a lot of opportunities. But . . . good game. Every car drives differently, and stealing a tour bus is highly satisfying. Yes, the cops will come after you with a vengeance, but they can’t do a damn thing to you. Of course, you’re in a tour bus, so you can’t really get away from them, but I’m sure I’ll figure something out.

This is SUCH skiing snow…..

Went out to blow the driveway clean (thanks to last year’s foresight in finally breaking down and buying a snowblower, for with my very injured wrist this year, there will be no shoveling), and brushed the truck off, too. I had bothered to park facing out (easier to roll into 4-wheel) and I had pulled the winter wipers up off the windshield. I remembered that in our apartment in Syracuse, there were a couple of Saab-driving yuppies downstairs in the building that we couldn’t stand, and one of the things that we couldn’t stand about them was that every night (or every time it was going to snow, which was every night in Syracuse) they would pop their wipers upright so they wouldn’t get stuck to the windshield. And since I really didn’t like these guys, I interpreted it as some pretentious, annoying, goddamn yuppie thing to do, rather than the practical time and effort-saver it really is. And so for years I was unable to do this simple little thing, just because I couldn’t stand the first people I ever saw do it. How fucked is that?

Same thing kept me off Elvis Costello for the longest time, but I got over that.

Wipers up, boys!