Hardly Adrift

Snowpocalypse. Snowmageddon. Snow way to escape the hyperbole.

The Washington, DC, area experienced one its rare mega-snowfalls this past weekend, as you’ve undoubtedly heard, wherever you are. Because, even in this new information age, “If it snows, it goes” remains the climatic equivalent of the age-old crime-reporting mantra “If it bleeds, it leads.”

Nationally, the blizzard, which hit the entire mid-Atlantic area, no doubt delighted climate-change deniers and those who hate the federal government—when they don’t control the presidency and both houses of Congress, that is—because two feet or more of snow and single-digit wind-chills don’t neatly scream “global warming” and two weekdays now of federal shutdown have produced no hint of anarchy or evidence of the need for Washington lawmakers.

Lynn and I don’t doubt climate change for one second, nor do we loathe the federal government—not, at least, when a Democrat controls the White House and has enough party-mates in Congress to watch the Republican foxes guarding the regulatory henhouses.

Still, I’d have to say that the blizzard, on balance, delighted us, too. It did seem for a while there as if the flakes never would stop falling, and that the need, therefore, to constantly shovel the accumulating layers wouldn’t either. More than counterbalancing that, however, was the snow’s beauty and, perhaps most important, the joyfully unexpected fact that we never for one second lost power. This allowed us to stay warm indoors for the duration. And to use the computer, watch TV, prepare meals, take showers and spare our dog’s life.

About that last thing: It was touch and go for a while, as the inches multiplied but Bean’s refusal to do either form of his business remained steadfast. The snow started falling about mid-afternoon on Friday and probably measured around a foot and a half on our pink 1993 DC gay rights march yardstick 24 hours later—without our three-legged refusenik having peed so much as a drop or pooped so much as a dot in that entire timespan. This despite the fact that we’d not only repeatedly cleared and re-cleared a path down the stairs and along the driveway for him, but we also had laboriously hollowed out a large section of our front lawn down to the grass and over to the tree line for the presumed pleasure of our hesitant hound. There was nothing doing, however. And, with the world beyond our driveway a tall wall of white, he wasn’t about to venture any farther afield in search of a snowless nirvana that didn’t, in any event, exist.

At one point Lynn hit on an idea that we both regarded as possible genius. One of us could pee in a cup, she suggested, then splash the urine in a likely spot in hopes that Bean would sniff and follow suit, the way dogs tend to do upon encountering the yellow trails of their peers. It wouldn’t be canine piss, of course, but perhaps Bean wouldn’t notice. (He spends half his life licking his own dick. A Rhodes Scholar he is not.) We quite nearly were at our wits’ end, so it seemed well worth a try. We’d do it ahead of Bean’s next scheduled trip outside the house.

Given the utter lack of street traffic during the blizzard, I offered to eschew the cup, unzip my pants and let loose in the front yard. Lynn rather prudishly, it seemed to me, nixed that idea. I was outside shoveling a bit later that afternoon when she came down the steps with a warm cup of her own excretory juice. She splashed it against a tree in the exposed area of the yard and brought Bean out. He saw. He sniffed. He … continued to hold it in. Veni, vidi, viciously annoying!

This was the point at which, had we not had heat, lights, preserved food and various entertainments awaiting us indoors, we might well have looked beyond our deep love for, and hefty financial investment in, our dog and strangled him with our own three (cumulative) hands. At that point, Lynn was envisioning Bean’s inevitable urinary tract infection and/or complications from having a waste-impacted ass. I was envisioning either everything coming out inside our house or my wife being a nutcase worry wart for days to come, and wondering which thing would be worse.

As fortune had it, however, soon after the pee toss a neighbor with a shovel-equipped truck plowed a lane down on our street. Bean, on his next trip outside, deemed this pee path sufficiently pleasing, and promptly anointed it with his urine. About six hours later—on his final trip outside before bed Saturday night, with all but the last inch or so of our two feet having dropped—Bean further christened the street with the literal shitload of number two he’d been storing up. Lynn and I rejoiced, which frankly felt a little sad as a sign of what our lives had become. But no sadder, we guessed, than the gross euphoria that doubtless seizes parents when their young son or daughter finally drops that first big boy/big girl load from atop the porcelain doughnut.

Sunday, then, was dig-out day. It was mostly sunny but still cold when I headed outside to uncover our cars and afford them clear passage onto the street. I was grateful for the continued exercise, given the impossibility of running outside, but my body already was creaky and sore by that time, my wrist hurt from lifting the shovel, and the prospect of moving the twin mounds of vaguely car-shaped snow was daunting.

About two hours in, however, our next-door neighbor, his brother and the brother’s teenage son, having mostly finished their own shoveling, offered to lend their cumulative muscle to my project. Being the proud, macho guy I am, I hesitated for as many as two seconds before vigorously shaking my head affirmatively. They did an outstanding job, completing the task in a fraction of the time it would have taken Lynn and me to do it. (This annoyed me ever so slightly, because now I feel hugely indebted to a neighbor I hadn’t much liked, for admittedly petty reasons that have everything to do with me and nothing to do with him. But I’m pretty sure I’ll get over it.)

The upshot was that, by about 1:30 Sunday afternoon, my battle with the elements was done. The snow still was, and is, beautiful. I therefore was well-rested, and literally empowered, to watch the initial episode of the X Files reboot on TV Sunday night. The federal government has given me abundant reason not to hate it by being closed yesterday and today, as this means no work for me, given that my office takes its cues from the feds. As of this morning, our sorely missed old-school print newspaper again is being delivered. Why, I could jump in my car right now and attend a movie matinee if I so chose. Life is good. (No, not for the planet in the long term, but I’m trying to stay in the moment here.)  

So, yes, I’d have to say that on balance, we count ourselves as fans of the recent blizzard. We survived it quite nicely. And our dog did, too. He can thank that neighbor with the plow.