Whether it's weather...

We live in New Hampshire, which is considered a wonderful place to be if you like winter. The place is rife with skiers, skaters, sledders, tobogganers, snowboarders, ski mobilers, ice fisherman...and me. You would expect New Hampshire to be cold and snowy wouldn’t you? Yep, you would. But it’s not. Not this year. The closest we’ve come to actually having any snow (in our part of the state anyway) is a brief dusting last week, not in time for Christmas and not even needing shoveling or plowing.

“What kind of winter is that?” you might ask. “Not winter!” I would answer. Dang! I like winter. I need winter. I need snow, nice fluffy white snow. So where is it?! The mid-west has hogged all the snow! Not fair… They get all the tornadoes and heat waves you could desire (if anyone in their right mind would desire either of those). Why do they have to get all the snow too?

I thought it would be nice now that we live in the apartment, to have a snowstorm where I didn’t have to worry about the Rock getting a heart attack because he was shoveling tons of snow every couple of hours and we could stay inside together and be cozy and have all that time to do ‘together’ things and sip hot chocolate or tea or some such and look out the window together and enjoy being out of reach for awhile and say things like “Look at all that snow! Boy, isn’t it great that I/you don’t have to go out in that and shovel and get tired and wet and sore…”

Now that we’re perfectly situated for enjoyment of winter instead of dreading it, there isn’t one. No snow. Nothing. The temperatures are such that a light jacket is about all that is needed most of the time. Well, all right… The Rock has to dress more warmly at night when he takes the Old Guy out for his interminable walks. I grant you that standing around for long periods of time waiting for the Old Guy to remember what it is that he’s supposed to be out there for can make you cold but part of that is because who wants to be outside standing around waiting for a geriatric dog’s bowels to get functioning anyway?

The Rock complains that he can’t even get up a good head of steam walking, and thus getting some decent exercise, because the Old Guy has gotten so terribly lame that he can hardly get out of his own way anymore. It’s usually a battle of wills and stubborn endurance as to the length and fruition (or futility) of the constitutional anyway. As with all of us getting old, the Old Guy’s ‘workin’s’ aren’t much anymore.

What often happens is that after being out so long I consider sending out the troops to see if they’ve succumbed to the elements or have been abducted by aliens, but then back in they come, the dog dragging and the Rock’s face flushed with consternation, just in time to hear the ominous sound of tootsie rolls of death plopping onto the wall-to-wall carpeting as the Old Guy continues on his journey through the length of the apartment laying down a fragrant track. The Rock has developed a very colorful form of verbal expression these days. He does everything in his power to coax our geriatric chum to express himself outside instead of inside but to no avail. This behavior has come about since he’s become so stiff and enfeebled. He’s not a spiteful fellow and until this past year he’s never ever had an accident of any kind under any circumstance. We’re trying to remember his exemplary past but the memory dims in comparison to frequency of the transgression.

Another thing which has become a problem is the Old Guy’s shaky bladder control. Oh he does alright in the house as far as that’s concerned but he has trouble holding it through the hallway until he gets outside on the grass. He forgets, I guess, which side of the door is supposed to be his cue. What happens now is the Rock gets him leashed up and runs out through the hallway as fast as he can and gets the Old Guy into permissible territory quickly and woe unto anyone who decides to come in that door at that moment. The Rock has to be careful that he doesn’t run anyone down in his haste. I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky that the Old Guy isn’t incontinent so far.

Well, for heaven sake, how did I get on this topic?! I started out to chat about a couple of winter ironies. The first being that New England is now warmer than other parts of the United States (places that are traditionally warm like the south and west…). It’s warm, there’s no snow, although there is rain, and now that we could enjoy a winter, there isn’t any. I think the Rock was actually looking forward to standing at the window and thumbing his nose since the snow was no longer a problem for him.

The other irony? We have not had to put the heat on. Not once! It’s so warm in here sometimes we have to open a window a little bit. Doesn’t it figure? We used to have to pre-buy a whole tank of precious oil to get us through the winter and that was expensive and called for us to monitor our usage and sometimes ‘tough’ it out a little bit. Heat is included in our rent now and we have not had to use any BTUs thus far. That means we’re paying for nothing. Sigh, might as well be summer…