One lump or two?

by June McInnes

“Did you hear that?” My husband said to me last night whilst we were in the lounge watching TV. I said no, because I didn’t hear anything. He’d turned off the sound on the TV. Straining to listen, nothing. Whoosh, thump, I heard it that time, this noise was followed by another thump and what sounded to me like a 1lb bag of uncooked rice being sprinkled over our deck. There it was again, I got up and peered out of the window, about half a roof’s worth of ice had fallen off said roof and was now sitting in a pile by the front door. It’s always like that this time of year, and it makes you jump out of your socks!.

We clear as much snow as we can each year but with the extra we’ve had this year it became impossible to move it all by hand. Snow is very pretty but also very deadly in my book, One of the stages of layers that switch between soft fluffy snow and hard ice that build up in the yard, you step on what looks to be a solid pile only to find your foot drops through several layers and it cuts your ankle if you are unlucky like me.

Then there’s the stage of it being polished by the wind and smoothed to perfection , again it looks nice and that it would be OK to walk out on it only to find you end up “skating” uncontrollably downhill towards our gate, picking up speed and then slammed against our metal gate and fence. Cue the penguin walk or hanging onto the deck or fence like some crazy cat trying to avoid being thrown down a well.

Last week we returned home after a visit to town , our son Simon got out of the truck, started to walk around the front of it to get to the gate and he slipped and half disappeared under the truck up to his waist. Thankfully he was alright, just a few bumps and bruises but it certainly shakes you up. His dad saw he was alright and said to him was he giving the truck a quick check out underneath, funny, yet not funny.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve had falls in the past where I just couldn’t get up and that there was nothing to pull myself up on and the only way my husband could find me was to find out where the giggling was coming from, I was unhurt but for the life of me I could not get up and was crawling around on all fours laughing at the absurd situation that had unfolded.

I’m not a fan of deep snow as you can probably tell, this year we seemed to have much more, it’s been melting over the last few days but it’s still two feet deep out there. Far too high for someone who is only five feet or so tall. I really can’t wait for it to all melt and go away. The only member of our household who will be upset when it does will be our dog, he loves it, can’t get enough of it, he rolls in it, he jumps into it and even eats it, crazy fluffy, happy dog that he is. Taking him out is quite difficult on this polished ice, it has all the attributes of oiled glass and when your excitable dog pulls on the lead as he jumps up and down can be a little scary, I can just see myself falling over and speed skating down the slope to get smashed into the gate and fence again and not be able to get back to the house, he’s it’s happened before, all the while the dog thought I was playing and jumped up and down excitedly as if to say “oh good, you love it like I do and you want to play too” sigh, that would end up me having to crawl to the front door whilst giggling again, I always laugh when I fall down unless I’m badly hurt, maybe it’s a defence mechanism, I don’t know, but I do.

So here’s to the melting days ahead and the complete disappearance of it all , to the lush green grass that grows here and the beautiful teen leaves all over our woodland trees, I intend to enjoy the green hue from our lounge window for as long as I can right up until next winter when it starts all over again. Sigh.

Take care of yourselves, wash your hands, wear a mask if you want to and please, be nice to one another.