Fat Flakes

Got a good eight inches last night. Big, wet and sticky – just like I like it! So wonderful to wake up to that – just makes me hope to get more this afternoon.

A friend asked, “What’s your favorite thing to do in the winter – now that you’ve seen a long stretch of it?”

“Curling up in my den with a warm fire, reading a fat book and watching the snow just…fall down out of the sky.”

This question was posed as a group of us were sitting at one of those wonderful dives, eating pub food to re-fuel for the hour plus snowmobile ride back to the safety of The Car. We had peeled a couple of layers of clothes off just to sit down, we all had Helmet Head and I, personally, had just peeled the other four layers off so I could sit my cold, numb butt down on an even colder toilet seat.

I was not feeling pretty. Shockingly, it does not make me feel sexy to visualize my bashed and bloody body wrapped around a tree. Even if that tree is an Almighty Birch. Clearly I’m not from here. Three faces looked at me like I had lost my mind. My husband looked at me like he’d lost $150 on a recent snowshoe purchase.

Everyone says the key to surviving the long, lonely winter is to “get out in it”! I have handsome men offering me their services. They have skis I can borrow, snowshoes I can try and, oh, don’t they all have just the Perfect Trail. (which is different from a Happy Trail, which none have offered to show me)

Since we did buy the snowshoes, poles and, yet more, appropriate footwear, we figured we oughta get out there. I googled images of “snow shoeing” to see what to wear. One must always look the part. I put together my costume, layered up, took a few off, peed and prepared to strap in.

Let me back up a bit…. Studmuffin, who is one of those guys who can do/play/sing/yodel anything and make it look easy, thought we were going up The Gator. Hole the pole there, pal. I’m not going UP anything. Last time I was on the damn Gator, I had to stop four times and, at least one of them was to put my head between my legs so I didn’t yak my smelt basket.

I decided to snowshoe the (flat) trail behind my house. He, who didn’t get to be a stud by that kind of candy-ass exercise, found a more worthy companion and assaulted said Gator. I, who had to at least make some tracks to prove I did it, started out on my own.

I walked straight out of my right snowshoe three times in the first ten steps. Each re-strap required the unwinding of the pole strap from my wrist, the yanking of the glove, the bending over and diddling with the strappy thing. Then putting it all back on so I could take three more steps before repeating. I was already sweating.  I looked back at the house. Well, actually, I just had to look over at the house, as it was not behind me yet.

“Does this count as exercise?”, I wonder. “I’m sweating, right?  I hate it, right? Aren’t those the two criteria?”

I finally found my stride and made it to the highway and back. I even went a little past the house so I could lie and say I went wayyy past the house. “See? See my tracks?”

By the time the guys got back from their hike, I had shed all my layers and was posing in the kitchen with a protein shake. I was pretty bored because I’d been posing for about 30 minutes

Finally, dry and exhausted, my snowy friends satisfied I had conquered the tundra, I hopped on the couch, burrowed into my Snuggie and looked out the window.

From one fat flake to another: I love you, Snow.