Switching to “This and That”, here’s a piece the Wisconsin Rapids Tribune published a year ago-about where I’m at with our winter frolics around here.                             

                                                            Febrrr-uary

             Peering out our window, Ruthie grinned, “It snowed again-how great!”

            No winter lover, I muttered, “Yeah, for polar bears and penguins!”

            She ran to call her pals Sharon and Gail to go cross-country skiing. I wasn’t invited, she knowing full well what I was seeing, or imagining anyway-that the frozen landscape was a sunny beach with the surf rolling in. She’d heard me whine often enough-“If I were Governor, I’d veto February!”-(…but I’d keep Valentine’s Day). Whereas, the Snow Queen even decorated our road post with a penguin.

          

                                                      The Queen and her posted pal

            I’d hoped this winter would be short, but no our road was still a skating rink. Last week I’d slid into a drift when pulling in from Hwy 13 and by the time our snow plow lady, two of her helpers, and Ruthie helped pull me out, my downhill slide with Wisconsin winters went even faster.

            This week she charged upstairs yelling, “Dear, there’s water dripping from the den ceiling!”

            “No way, sweetie-it’s a jillion-below outside!”

            Turned out there was an ice dam along the gutter. Interior heat under the shingles had melted the snow, causing droplets to leak through our ceiling. I hammered the ice but it was like concrete. An hour later I was back from the hardware store with a hundred feet of heating cables. After slipping and sliding around on our snowy roof, we had them spread out and lapped over the gutter. The leaking stopped, although the melting formed huge icicles reaching to the ground. My Snow Queen gushed, “They look so lovely!”

            I was the one who found water merrily spreading out on the floor from under our basement sink. The condensation overflow tube from our furnace feeds into it and drains out through the foundation wall. It was sub zero and the outlet pipe had frozen solid. Trying to thaw it out there with a heat gun didn’t work and also turned me into a Popsicle. Soon back from the hardware place, I removed my gloves and fumbled with freezing fingers to wrap the heating coil around the pipe…and it worked. Except, by then I was one of those ice statues those weird people in Minnesota admire so much. (Ruthie does, too).        

            Next, the spring for our garage door-opener broke. Royce, our gem of a repair guy, told us, “When it’s very, very cold the garage door can freeze to the floor, the steel spring gets brittle, and when you punch your opener, …Bang!..., the spring breaks.”
            The last straw was yesterday when I was handed yet another cold weather bulletin by my Snow Queen and this time even she sounded fed-up. “Our downstairs shower drain is frozen!” We’d forgotten to pour plumbing anti-freeze into the drain after showering. We fed in boiling water, drew it out when cooled, and poured in more, over and over until the drain freed. I went to the hardware store and bought extra gallons of anti-freeze.

            This last episode finally convinced both of us that even though we’d be missed around here (especially by our hardware store) it’s time to visit our friends in Tucson. So, as we abandon this winter wonderland to you hardier folks, we want to leave some words of encouragement, and especially to my fellow February-haters. Cheer up! Valentine’s Day is just around the corner!