I called in to work this morning. I didn't even bother with a vague untruth (ie:"I'm not feeling well") on my boss's voice mail. I simply said the roads around here were faaaar too treacherous and I wasn't going to risk it. Now I had known in advance that the weather was going to be messy, but the weather report I'd watched last night said the precipitation wasn't due to start until about 8am, which is a half an hour after I get in on Mondays. So I was fully intending to go. I got up on time, got ready & dressed. Now as I'm getting ready I could hear the freezing rain already tippy-tip-tapping on the roof. In a surge of anxiousness, I went to slip my St Christopher's medal over my head...and the chain snapped. Now this is a large linked chain, and the break was obviously reparable, in fact, I stood for nearly five minutes trying to re-link the thing, but with the long-ish acrylic talons I'd recently glued to me finger-ends, this task was utterly impossible. So I stuffed the necklace in my pocket and continued on my way. But I paused, outside, at my car. I stood with the sleet falling on my head and watched the traffic. It was craaaawling. The ground on which I stood was thickly encrusted with ice. These two factors were steadily upping my anxiety levels. It looked like I was going to have to take a pickaxe to my car to break it out of its frosty cocoon. And the thought in my head was, even though I did have the St Christopher's medal on my person...wasn't it an inauspicious sign that it broke in the first place?? Ultimately I decided yes, it was damned inauspicious and too ominous a portent for me to ignore. I went back in and rang my boss (and was pleased to be answered by her voice mail....I have not yet --knock wood--had to speak personally to the bosslady when calling in. Oh how I adore voicemail!!) left my quick message and then changed back into my jammies and went back to sleep. Until noon, at which point I got up and made crepes.
Mmmmmm crepes. I ate enough crepes to choke a mammoth. Had me a big crepe feed. I like that --crepe feed. Periodically, my dad and uncles will gather at camp outside of hunting season and just have a big meal of whatever game they've collectively killed enough of.. but it's not called a "meal" or a "feast", this somehow , origins unknown, is always called a "feed". As in, "Goin' up tah camp for a perch feed" or "Yeah, last time I saw Joe was at that venison feed we had in January" So I have adopted that for my own, everyday usage. It's 50%tribute to 50% mockery of my redneck roots.
So anyways after my crepe feed, I called the work 800# , ostensibly to see that they were getting along fine with out me. Now in all honesty, there could utter anarchy at work-- swarming locusts, wildebeest stampedes, marauding Visigoths--and if I am not there on that unfortunate day I really don't care one iota. What I actually wanted to hear when I called in was that half the department had begged offa work and that I wasn't the lone wuss. Well, I got Lisa, who reassured me that everything was running a-okay without me and EVERYONE ELSE WAS THERE. Right. Super. Thus rendering me the lone wuss. She was NOT being as reassuring as she thought she was, not reassuring at all actually. I was somewhat reassured by all the footage on the news of smashed up cars off the road, many of them off of I-91 (the very interstate I traverse to get to work). But still I feel like everybody thinks this could be my contrived way of getting MLK Day off. Especially after my considerable loud griping last Thurs or Fri about us not getting it off. But I really stayed home for the exact reason I said I was staying home. I was genuinely excessively nervous and the roads were truly dangerous (there is WPTZ News Channel 5 footage that backs me up on this point!) And still I feel like I come off all suspicious. I often find I'm more at ease when I'm lying to people. How perverse is that?
Whenever I hear the term "Old Man Winter" I start singing "Ol' Man River" from Showboat. Always in my head, and every now and then, aloud. If you watch weather reports on the news, you will invariably hear the term, as they try to punch up their schpiel with a smidge of creative writing and in those efforts they'll let fly the term "Old Man Winter" which, inexplicably seems much favored over "Jack Frost"
Anyways, I only know a small snippet of Ol' Man River, but it amuses me to sing that bit of it (substituting "winter" for "river" of course) and try to do an impossibly deep bass-baritone just like Paul Robeson did it.
I decided that I will soon buy the Wives & Daughters DVD (in keeping with my current BBC literary adaption /period romance flick kick) but I want to buy and read the book first. I did find this site , where I could read the whole thing online, but I just can't get into that idea. There's just something to be said for the tactile experience of reading a book and I dig the notion of "curling up with a good story" which is hard to actually, physically do if you're reading a title online. Still, I appreciate that there are these sites out there...handy if I wanted to quote Voltaire in my blog and didn't have a copy of "Candide" at the ready, something like that. Actually, I think I might read chapter one of Wives& Daughters online, just to make sure that it's not insufferably dull before I buy it. And so I gotta wrap up my current read "Lucky Jim". The book is kind of disappointing plot-wise (in that virtually NOTHING happens) but the main character (yep, the titular Jim) is engaging and very, very relatable. And it's a pretty shortish novel, so overall I guess I'd rate it worth a read. But as you know, if the outcome falls short of my idyllic expectations, well then I'm apt to completely rescind my recommendation. I'll let ya know... ..
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