One Snowy Day In Iowa

The forecast for Iowa is snow.  That’s not surprising as the forecast for Iowa has been “SNOW” for five months.  We are a white powder state.  There was more snow and colder temperatures here than they had in Canada for the winter Olympics.  However, I have heard no rumors of plans to move the winter Olympics to Iowa any time soon.

Snow in Iowa this year started out with a wallop back in November, right around Thanksgiving.  Until that time, the temperature was quite decent.  We had a mild not too hot and not too humid summer.  That in itself is unusual.

It was so mild that it was actually cold in August.  I was working on a movie shoot here in August.  Movies work on a 14-hour day and we were doing night shoots around the time of the Iowa State Fair.  It was so chilly that we were wearing layers of clothing, winter coats, boots and hats.  That’s very freaky.  Normally, around that time the temperature hits the hundreds with humidity in the drench your skin if you’re out for a minute range.  Normally, they start school then and have to let the kids out early because it’s so hot.  Not this year.

I suppose the good news from those cold August nights was that we didn’t get any chigger or mosquito bites.  It was simply too cold for those pests to come out and suck our blood.  That’s probably a good thing because we were shooting a zombie movie at the time.

Iowa set records for the most snow on the ground, the most consecutive days of snow and so on.  My husband set records for the number of times he had to plow out our driveway with the snow blower.  He also set records for the most items eaten by the snow blower.  This included our doormat, and a few electrical cords.

The doormat was by the back patio door.  I thought it was safe because it has been by the back patio door for years and has been safe for several winters.  Being the back patio, this mat is in our back yard.  When we had beasties, my husband did clear some paths for our short-legged basset hounds to go do their doggy duty.  The back patio was safe because if it was shoveled out, he always did it with the snow shovel.  We have a hot tub sitting on our patio.  Our house has a walkout basement and the patio was a great place to put the hot tub.  It never occurred to me that he would try to run the snow blower around there.

That was silly of me.  Of course, this year he got the bright idea to run the snow blower through the back yard and make a path from the front driveway, down the side of the garage, through the gate, down into our back yard, past the deck and right to the patio door.  Once he got to the patio door the snow blower grabbed the poor rubber doormat and ground it up like sausage – like a basset hound with a tasty ham bone.  I am not sure exactly why Pat did this.  He’s generally vague about where he gets his ideas.  Most likely this had something to do with his bike, though.

Winter weather can be pretty and a little eerie as well.  We had several days of fog.  It was very cold outside so the fog clung to the bare tree branches like gauze on a zombie.  

The fog was followed by ice storms.  The ice clung to the bare branches, and everything else, like frozen colorless zombie tears.

The ice was followed by more snow. No "January thaw" this year for those of us in Iowa. Of course, we weren't the only ones to get snow.  There was one point where Hawaii was the only state not to have snow.  In other states they came up with clever names like "Snowzilla"and "Snowmaggedon".  Here in Iowa we just groaned like snow zombies and went out to fire up our snowblowers once again.

Pat’s main job with the snow blower was to free us from our house and to plow a path so that the mail carrier could deliver our mail.  We have a mailbox by the street.  When the city comes by with their plow, they leave a foot tall ridge of snow blocking our driveway.  They also leave a ridge that prevents mail truck access to our mailbox.  So Pat dutifully went out and plowed out the driveway and our mailbox. Meanwhile, I stayed inside and polished off the remaining boxes of last years Girl Scout cookies.

Mail is delivered on one side of the street by mail carriers driving English style.  This means the steering wheel for the mail truck is on the right side of the car (vs. the left side that the rest of us drive on).  This lets the mail carrier drive up to the box and tuck the mail in.  Our mailbox is located right next to the neighbor’s mailbox.  The mailboxes looked like two little eyes peeking out of the mouth of a snow mound monster most of the winter. It was like they were pleading with us to save them.  

Believe me when I say that I would love to have mail delivered to our front door.  But, that most likely would require both a change in the city ordinance which rules where mail boxes can grow and a lot of federal red tape involving mail delivery specifications.  The mail boxes didn't have a chance against odds like that. 

In spite of the snow records my husband continued to ride his bike. We can insert adjectives here.  One could say he faithfully rode his bike.  One could say he stubbornly rode his bike.  Both would be accurate.  

What is a little bit crazy is that he didn’t ride it yesterday.  We have had a bit of a warm up, albeit short-lived.  Yesterday the temperatures were almost 60.  It was sunny.  There was little to no wind.  It was a perfect day for being outdoors.  I used the time to take the Christmas lights off of our outside trees.  But, Pat did not go for a bike ride.  This, my friend, is scary.  Very scary.

How Many Men Does It Take?

How many men does it take to change a light bulb? The answer is that it probably only takes one to change it, but it will take a battalion to clean up the mess one man makes while changing the light bulb.

After all, men are descended from wild untamed hyenas. This is why they (men and boys) throw wild boisterous parties in high school and college. I long ago realized that my guy is an alien. So it stands to reason that the original hyenas were actually space aliens themselves. Most likely they were kicked out of their home planet for having loud parties and boisterous behavior.

Picture the following scenario. A stately aged hyena sits in his easy chair simultaneous watching two football games, a TV reality show about hyenas living in the wild who have become lumbar jacks and are racing a neighboring tribe to harvest an entire forest while driving 18 wheeler trucks across icy lakes. Outside on the deck he recently built little birdies feast on seed from his feeder. A 16 gauge shotgun is at his side to fend off any marauding crows which try to hog the feeder. He has told his wife the entire purpose of the deck and TV programs are for him to waiting patiently in his living room blind while attracting humming birds to his feeder so that he can observe their nest and advise her of the best spot for harvesting humming bird eggs to bake into a pie or cake for the church charity auction.

But then, his peaceful afternoon is disrupted by what sounds like a heard of deranged rhinos playing a discus toss with bowling balls and setting off noisy fire crackers while wearing football cleats which and track mud across a newly varnished floor. He reaches for his shotgun, reminding himself that there are reasons why some species eat their young. Refusing to admit that this eyesight is changing and also refusing to wear glasses, his attempt at focusing his sights on Junior are interrupted by the ringing of the phone.

The phone that rings is not just any phone. It is a “man phone”. Therefore the ring is not just any ring, but the bleeting sound made by an elk, only more funky and electronic. The grumpy elder hyena answers the man phone because his lovely wife is out gathering coveted resources from the weekend sale at the mall. Both he and Junior know that her eagle eye will immediately spot any new scratches in the newly varnished hardwood floor she made him put in as a prerequisite to inviting all of his buddies over to drink beer while allegedly building the deck.

On the other end of the phone is another grumpy elder patriarch hyena who asks “What the beep is going on over there?” in a raspy, disgruntled and angry voice. “I was in the middle of watching the army hyenas trump the flying squirrel squadron. The game was in double dog dare overtime, the deciding touchdown was being tossed and my reception went out because a bowling ball came hurling through my sliding patio door and took out the TV screen. It also knocked over my wife’s plant and she’s going to kill me when she gets back from the sale at Godzilla Villa.”

The elders agree it’s time to call an emergency meeting of the neighborhood daddy dog hyenas and come up with a plan. It’s time for junior to move out. They pack him into a space ship and send him sailing off to earth. Since then they have continued to monitor junior’s progress in his new environment through regular reports known as the Darwin Awards and You-tube videos.

Back on earth, junior evolved into modern day man. First came the need to grow opposable thumbs. This came about after a number of dog with a bone dilemmas. The first junior had a bone. Then he spotted another one. Junior wanted both bones but couldn’t get both bones in his mouth. He tried carrying one bone in his mouth while nosing the other bone along the ground back to his man cave.

The bone eventually became round from being flipped along the ground. This was useful but junior lost a lot of the bone that way. Ultimately paws became hands so Junior could scrape his knuckles along the ground and carry two bones at once, one in each hand. And so, teenage mutant space alien hyenas were the origin of today’s modern Cro-Magnon dudes.

And, back to the light bulb. Hyenas are pack animals. Therefore, it is only logical that modern day men are pack animals. Therefore it is virtually impossible to get a guy to change a light bulb (or to do anything else on the ‘honey do list’) without major complaining and without six or seven of his beer drinking buddies around for support.

Of course this support is not hold the ladder support. It’s conversational support. It’s guys coaching guys on the best light bulbs from the ideal real man’s hardware store along with stories about all the light bulbs ever changed since the dawn of man.

Of course, many of the stories involve harrowing near death feats. Men consider these events to be acts of bravery. When changing light bulbs, the stories involve flying sparks of electricity, exploding light bulbs that spray tiny shards of glass everywhere, precariously balanced tipping ladders stacked on uneven chairs with wobbly legs with an occasional slippery slope thrown in for dramatic effect.

The sad fact is that many of these stories, albeit possibly exaggerated, are based on true events. Today, we call the subjects of these true events the winners of the Annual Darwin Awards.

And so it goes. My husband changed a burned out florescent light bulb in our kitchen fixture today. This only involved standing in a chair, removing the cover plate while dumping remnants of dead bugs all over the kitchen counter and floor, and sparking the new bulb so it instantly burned out and tripped the circuit breaker. While he was up there, he discovered some sticky spots on the cover plate, most likely the result of our last exploding bottle of wine. This resulting in his taking the cover plate over to the sink while he held the sprayer nozzle very close to the cover plate and sprayed water at full blast over the cover plate. Gently wipe is, after all, a foreign concept and not one that can penetrate the concrete shell of the male brain.

And so, an hour later, I’ve finished mopping the kitchen floor, wiping off the countertops and cupboard doors, sweeping the dehydrated dead bugs from the floor and vacuuming shrapnel from everywhere.

But now I have a new dilemma. I have to decide which is worse – an electrical fire or telling my husband that something is jammed in the vacuum cleaner, causing the motor to emit the bad electrical burning smell that immediately precedes sparks flying. It might be better for my sanity just to go hunt humming bird eggs or troll the mall.