This Winter Isn’t Even for the Birds

Spotted this poor guy, buried beak first in a neighbor’s yard, on a walk about the ‘burb during a brief pause in the continuous barrage of cold and snow.

Quitter.

The Winter of This Malcontent

I’m feeling nostalgic these days. Nostalgic for global warming.

New England winters like San Diego springs.

Oceans rising all around us.

The landlocked unwittingly blessed with beachfront property.

Sigh.

Sure, the environmentalists scream and moan about losing the polar bear but, deep down, they go to bed salivating at the prospect of increased access to fresh fish tacos.

Now we have “climate change.” Idiotic name. “Change” implies a shift in the routine. Instead it’s day upon day of subfreezing temperatures and foot upon foot of snow. You know: excessive winter-like weather in winter, for crying out loud. 

Sure, I appreciate the endless supply of cocktail ice just outside my window prevents me from ever cutting happy hour short, but enough is enough.

Where’s a nutty professor claiming our zealous burning of fossil fuel will permanently keep our home heating bills in check when you need one?

Not my frozen twig and berries.
Photo: http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/

Sledding – It’s Been Downhill All the Way

When the frosty flakes start to stick, most children rush outside to build snowmen, toss snowballs or flap their arms and legs for snow angels. Mine grab a bowl and spoon to make a meal. Yo, kids—they are “frosty flakes” not “Frosted Flakes.” Once sufficiently stuffed (or intestinally hypothermic), my offspring then often head for the garage to dig out their sleds.

For me, growing up among the rocks and trees of North Stamford meant only being able to venture out to our pre-shoveled driveway or the backyard for a zip downhill on an ancient wooden Speedaway with half-rusted runners. However, one moonless January evening after dusk, I learned metal TV trays provided a superior riding speed and distance when I promptly rocketed up and over a wire fence and into our mucky backyard pond.

My children have more (and drier) options, provided they can stop our Labrador retriever from chewing on their foam Snow Boogie boards like they were Milk-Bone burritos. Within a short trudge of our home is the Sterling Farms Golf Course, which I understand from longtime residents in my neighborhood was an even shorter trudge way back in the day before use of wire-cutters was deemed poor civic etiquette. The most obvious choices here are the long, wide fast rides from the sixth green and the seventh tee box. However, we sometimes just avoided the crowds by staying on the short but steep side-to-side approach to the ninth green. Note I wrote “side-to-side.” Sledding lengthwise down the 350-yard ninth fairway is a breathtaking ride until you discover the neck-breaking cliff behind the tee box. Don’t ask how I know. When the need for speed wasn’t so great when my kids were young, we’d stay on the gentle slope of the eighteenth fairway. I wish my tee shots would adhere to such a smooth path.

One great sledding venue still unknown to my kids, but familiar to my wife and me is Cummings Park. When we were young, single and (don’t tell the priest who married us) living in sin in a downtown condo in the 1990s, we took more than a few trips down the 60-degree hill overlooking the playgrounds. Our rides—cheap plastic roll-up sheet-sleds purchased from the old Caldor store at Summer and Broad streets. Those offered good speed, lousy control, and worse cushioning for your, um, bottom line. Trust us.

NOTE: This article first appeared in Stamford Magazine.

Warming Up for Opening Day

The clickity-tickity-tick of thousands of needles fighting unsuccessfully to stab through the shingled roof over my head woke me around six this morning.

Half-blinded by unfulfilled REMs while blinded the rest of the way by the  nearsightedness I’ve been cursed with since childhood, I groped the nightstand for my glasses before stretching over to reach the window shade.

Even in my bleariness, I clearly recognize winter’s last big ”eff you.”

View from my living room 7 a.m.

A-Sleddin’ We Will Go

It will seem silly to any of you in the northern half of the United States today that my biggest concern when I decided to write about sledding in Connecticut for my hometown magazine was that we’d be having a mild, flake-free winter in these parts.

But it’s true. Those are the things you worry about when you have to file copy eight weeks before the piece actual gets published.

I’m pretty certain I when I e-mailed my draft of “Snow Patrol” to my editor in early October that I was sitting on my back deck in shorts, fighting off the last of the summer mosquitos and mulling whether we had enough sweetened lime juice to mix up a celebratory gimlet.

I’d cry but the last thing I need is ice cubes.

Go. Read “Snow Patrol.” I hope it warms your funny bone.

Zen and the Art of Snow Shoveling

I mocked the warning of the Woolly Bear caterpillars with narrow brown midsections. I laughed at the extra thick skins on the onions at the farmer's market. I never noticed the thinning crotch in my thermal undies.

Ignoring all the foreboding signs, I plowed ahead with my plan that this winter would be the one when we would remove all the snow off our driveway by hand.

Call me macho, call me masochistic or, like my mother did when leaving me the number of her plow guy, just call me stupid.

Generating Laughs Through the Storm

Here in the stubby tail of Connecticut, where we are surrounded by two types of damage-causing greenery – trees and hedge funds, we tend to lose power whenever a storm blows through. You name it, we’ve gone Dark Ages during it: Hurricane Irene in 2011, the Nasty Nor'easter of ‘10, the arrival of "The Jerry Springer Show" in ‘09, etc.

Even minor of atmospheric disturbances seem to cause a power grid failure in our slice of suburgatory. As such, I instinctively grab a flashlight when I sense a hint of a breeze or that a member of our household has consumed Mexican food.

These frequent and prolonged outages prove especially precarious to our family as Uncool Estates depends solely on electricity. Not just for lighting and refrigeration but also for heating (electric baseboards!), sewage (injector pump!) and sanity (Excitable and Li’l Diva are surgically attached to iPhones, iTouches and ¡Ay, caramba! who knows what other gadgets).

This spring, My Love and I agreed we had had enough of bad weather and the occasional burrito turning us Amish. We blew a few years of the kids’ college tuition on a standby generator: a 20-kilowatt-creating, blackout ass-kicking savior.

Or so I thought.

What follows is my official “Superstorm Sandy / Frankenstorm” diary:

The Thrilling Ride into Summer

Summer's arrival in our house has nothing to do with calendars, temperatures or fireworks. It starts with a steady ascent of anticipation, teases us with a quick dip then throws us a curve before plunging us into the thick of it with a rattling headlong rush.

Summer comes on the Dragon Coaster.

Unlike many who grew up a short trip from this 83-year-old wood-beamed marvel, I have almost no childhood memories of the rollercoaster or the Playland amusement park that surrounds it in Rye, N.Y. That's what makes our annual trip there as special to me as to my two children.

This ritual started a few years ago the way the best things tend to, not out of the need for nostalgia's comfort or the desire to begin a grand tradition, but through the lowered expectations that come with not having to pay an admission fee. The local Make-a-Wish folks had given us a handful of free passes owing to Li’l Diva’s juvenile myositis so I figured, at worst, using them would give us a few hours away from our one true summer ritual at that time: the two kids bickering over who got to choose which Disney Channel rerun to watch for the 47th time.

Seasonal Breakup

Dear Summer,

I'm so over you.

Maybe not physically. No -- definitely not, physically. I still yearn for your warmth. That's what happens when you thin your blood for three months with daily infusions that are three parts India pale ale and two parts avobenzone.

That will pass, though. I'll just continue to compensate by donning socks every waking moment, just as I have done this first post-Labor Day week. It's the first time I've had to do that since June. JUNE! Even though those leather sandals I bought this spring still have a good couple weeks of tread left, I'm willing to send them on a premature permanent vacation.

Speaking of near-death experiences ...

The minivan is in an annual state of seasonal disaster that's even worse than usual, thanks to you. Your enormous tropical disturbances and steamy jet stream waters last month sent us packing two days and an entire case of beer early from the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Two adrenaline-stoked adults, two exhausted children and one confused Labrador retriever speeding off a barrier island at the ungodly August hour of 5 a.m. Then, 10 hours later, we arrive back at our Connecticut home only to discover, via an iPhone app, that the little dotted line projecting Hurricane Irene's eye shows her passing all of two miles from our house.

That was the last straw. For every pleasant yin you brought a much darker yang, my former friend.

Those picturesque afternoons and evenings on the back deck, sharing a cocktail or bite with family and neighbors? It was a sneak attack on my arteries and belly. You and your savory grilled meats, aromatic cheeses and sweet, sweet mojitos. I'm feeling my bad cholesterol level rising at the thought of that misbehavior you encouraged. My wife and son aren't happy about the golf-ball size welts your little winged terrorists left on their legs and arms, either.

The free tickets fate handed us to experience the many rides at that amusement park? They came with intolerable summer road repair standstills on I-84 and almost equally long waits inside. As for your other promised entertainments, those overpriced, underwritten 3-D family movies you pumped out every weekend ... promises not kept, ex-pal o’ mine.

The weeks of relaxation at home while our tween did sleepaway camp upstate? Ended early in an infected big toe and a nasty infestation of head lice. Sure, my thinning locks escaped the little critters, but just who do you think had to delouse the rest of the clan for an hour or so every day? For two weeks straight!

Summer, I'm going to hold a grudge against for you for some time.

At least until it stops raining.

And I get around to finally shoveling out the minivan. That's when I'm sure I'll start finding all those unintentional souvenirs you left behind.

The crumpled parking passes to the minor league baseball games.

The seemingly infinite grains of sand from along Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean.

The X-ed out sheets from the many rounds of travel bingo (how is it we never found a "bird on a wire"?).

The receipts from Gopher Ice Cream and Rita's Ice.

The collection of tiny pencils from golf courses both big and miniature.

Ghostly zinc oxide fingerprints from children and their pals.

All right, Summer, you had your moments.

Same time, next year … right?

Your friend,

Un

Snow Days Like The Old Days

All this snow that's been relentlessly pelting us here in the neutral zone between New York and New England has made this 39(ish)-year-old feel nostalgic.

So gather `round, kiddies, and let me tell you about the winters back when I was your age.

Oh, it was a golden time. Golden! The adults would just sit around all day, warming their hands around some brown dishwater they called coffee back then, complaining about how the weathermen had overhyped a storm that never materialized.

Yes, whippersnappers, I said "men." None of these zaftig chippies thrusting their occluded fronts all up in your face like today, no siree, Bob!

(What? You're name is Madison? Your folks name you after the mermaid in Splash or something?)

Back in the olden days - you know, the early 1980s - to be a TV weather prognosticator in you had to be male. You also had to be either portly or have a goofy nickname -- often both.

`Course we only had seven channels back then. Moreover, news was only allowed to be reported at meal times or right before bed. That's how we stayed so thin in those days: highly concentrated doses of media-induced agita.

After the weather liars frightened the bejeezus out us all, we'd scurry down to the Finast and purchase every last loaf of bread, carton of eggs and gallon of milk we could find. Why? Why to make the French toast, wisenheimer! Mounds of it!

What for? Why we'd toss it onto the streets so our rear-wheel-drive cars could get some traction. Yeah, you yungins don't know how lucky you are these days, what with your fancy 4x4s and your SUVs and your microwavable Aunt Jemima.

Broadcasters weren't always scaring us, though. Other times, they’d magically transmit through the air only the most wholesome entertainment like post-Somers "Three's Company" and pre-McGinley "Love Boat."

Huh? What do I mean “magically transmit”? Well, we had these oversized potato mashers screwed onto the roof that would transmogrify these invisible electrostatic streams of Technicolor down into a big honkin' cathode ray tube housed in a wooden crate the exact size, shape and weight of one of those Acme safes that were always dropping on Wile E. Coyote's skull. Ah, they don't oversaturate afternoon programming with genuine cartoon violence like that anymore, Junior. That's why you're so soft.

Then the cable TV came to town. That was the end of it. In came the HBO. The Cinemax. The sticking of the tin foil through the vents in the back of the box to sneak a peek of a partially descrambled Playboy Channel movie. Shocking. Literally. I've heard.

All the children started staying in at night. They were glued to the front of the tube instead of out loitering in the Friendly's parking lot, hopped up on hormones and strawberry Fribbles, or holding keg parties on one of the back holes of the golf course.

Bah, that's what passes for progress nowadays.

What's that? Oh, right. Winter when I was a kid.

After all that "storm of the century" talk on the airwaves, you know what? We'd get six flakes of snow. Six!

It'd stay so warm none of the ponds would freeze, not that they could anyway, what with all the chemicals from the old Big Mac clamshell containers we used to toss in there. But instead of thanking our lucky stars, we'd just grumble about those nincompoop forecasters who got us riled up for nothing.

Good times, good times.

Well, looks like another 18 inches has fallen outside. Now you kids -- get off my lawn! I mean it. Unless one of you wants to dig out the old Christmas tree I left there last week for the men to pick it up for recycling.

If you do, I'll give ya a shiny Susan B. Anthony dollar.

Get the whole "Always Home and Uncool" experience: visit the website! Dare to share! Tweet, Facebook this post now.

Still Powerless (and Gamey)

The lights remain off at Uncool Estates, however, we have found refuge in several places with an abundance of outlets and a tolerance for smelly patrons: namely, the public library, the mall and a few generous friends. Given this, a few observations from me:

• The TP at the library is far kinder and gentler than the see-through, one-ply stuff at the local Barnes & Noble "superstore." Super, my sore ass.
• This finding explains why our library is always in debt. Previously, I had thought its problem with excessive spending on paper products was about buying too many copies of the latest Jackie Collins novels.
• The library is definitely not spending its money on computer monitors. This one I'm working one looks like it fell off the back of a truck. 
• A truck delivering IBM PC Jrs.
• If dropped naked in the middle of the desert, the Things would die not of dehydration, starvation or sun exposure. Within 3 hours, they would keel over from lack of electricity, their thumbs flicking reflexively for their missing Nintendo DS Lites.

That's all for me now. If you want something fun to read in the meantime, please head over to Polite Fictions, a collaborative fiction blog I write for with some really talented folks.

This go round, we are doing "The Alphabet of Regret." We each take a letter then choose a subject accordingly: autism, breakdown, cowboys, etc. When my turn came up last week, I -- being the Ringo Starr of this band of bloggers -- went all Octopus's Garden/Yellow Submarine on them and wrote:

F is for Femme Fatale, a cautionary tale about mixing religion, revenge and, um, bondage.

Fiction, people, it's fiction.

Power to the Uncools! Please?

All those people left without electricity and heat after that storm knocked down all the trees and powerlines in the Northeast over the weekend?

The Uncools are among them.

We're all fine. We narrowly had a tree fall on the Minivan of Manliness while trying to get out of the neighborhood on Saturday night. We had another just miss our patio shortly after that. This freaked Thing 2 a bit, but other than that, we're all good.

Our house is fine, but dark and cold and missing a handful of shingles from the garage roof. Oh, it's also filled with a slowly rotting freezer full of food we had just purchased at Costco.

On the positive side, my arteries didn't need that 8 pounds of bacon, any way.

Latest word is that we'll get power back on Wednesday.

Night.

8 o'clock.


I'll survive but the Things were a bit stir crazy without computers, TVs and the like after just 30 minutes. We're at the public library charging up their Nintendo DS's as I type while I look for a non-existent local hotel room to crash in. They'll survive, though. Luckily, it isn't sub-freezing temperatures and I still have some firewood left from the storms three years ago to burn and we have a warm Lab to lay on our feet.

Please don't try to come help us. Really. I've had one cold shower in four days and I'm afraid my funk would render you unconscious.

Hope to have more for you soon from a re-electrified Uncool Estates. Be well, all. We are.

Why Today is a Snow Day

The automated messaging system called to let us know that schools would be closed today because of the impending blizzard.

That call came at 7 o’clock.

Last night.

The Things, however, decided not to take chances.

Right before bed they continued their long-standing “vague hint of a snowstorm” ritual involving poor fashion and kitchen utensils.

Thing 2’s teacher also didn’t want to take chances. Before she dismissed class yesterday afternoon, she gave them the following action list that if -- and only if  -- completed would ensure a thick, hearty snowfall overnight:

• Flush an ice cube down the toilet. Not a problem as long as my Tanqueray and tonic doesn’t accompany it on the journey.
• Wear your pajamas inside out and backwards to bed. Check. I’m generally good with anything that makes the little heathens actually wear PJs.
• Put a spoon under your pillow before going to sleep. Check. Uh, double check to make sure peanut butter is first wiped off the spoon.
• Sleep with your feet where your head should be and vice versa. Thankfully, My Love is in town so the kids won’t try to sleep in my bed with me. Thing 1’s feet can make an onion cry.

So if you are buried in the white stuff today, please blame my children. And our nation’s system of public education.

Then, use your non-shoveling time to read another snow-related essay of mine over on DadCentric called “Snow Brick Castles in the Air.”

First one there gets to use the neon green brick maker:

Technorati Tags: blizzard,winter storm,snow,snow day,winter,weather,my children control the universe

Shedding Extra Light on Your Seasonal Demise

Daylight Saving Time has been with us for almost two weeks and I'm happy to report that you, dear reader, are not dead. That's not a clever metaphor because I'm neither that smart nor that literate. Oh, I might have been at one time. But:

• 2,340 readings of "Go, Dog, Go!",
• about 6,208 games of "Candyland" (most of which I lost -- a pox on you, Mr. Mint!), and
• a few million viewings of "The Sonny Suite House of iWizard Montana"

have killed the few remaining brain cells the alcohol imbibed during my four years of "higher learning" had pickled and preserved for later use. 

There are good reasons why moving the clock an hour ahead makes me fear for your life. Unless, of course, you live in Hawaii. Residents in our tropical island state do not observe Daylight Saving Time. This is because federally mandated residency requirements for mai tai consumption, surfboard waxing and suntan-oil slathering makes it impossible to get a good grip on those tiny watch knobs. Frickin' socialist Democratic Congress! (Conversely, even though most of Arizona does not "spring forward" with the rest of us, I AM extremely concerned about those residents. You should be, too. Clearly, something is not right with people who willingly live in a desert without the express written consent of God via a burning bush.) 

To start with, I'm afraid you could have a massive coronary. This fear comes from doctors in Sweden who, during a break from their usual research into perfecting penis-enlargement pumps, analyzed the death rates of their fellow citizens. They found the incidence of heart attack is significantly higher in the first three days following the switch to Daylight Saving Time. Poor dead Swedes -- at least they made it long enough to enjoy a final Feast of St. Prinskorvblodpaltkroppkakor, which celebrates the end of winter with one last massive meal of pork-filling dumplings and blood sausage in a delicate triple-cheese sauce. 

Medical science also tells us that, according to a study of Australian death statistics from 1971 to 2001, men in the land of "shrimp on the barbie" (a phrase that never fails to make me think of little people tag-teaming a buxom plastic doll) kill themselves in droves during the first few weeks following the advancing of the clocks. Some will say this has to do with the time change messing with the body's circadian rhythms, thus adding stress to the body and mind. I, however, theorize that the real culprit here is bad Aussie pop music. How else to explain that the rate of self-inflicted deaths reached its zenith in 1988 right around the chart peak of Kyle Minogue's "The Loco-motion"? Further investigation into possible links to the pre-"Jessie's Girl" singles of Rick Springfield is now underway.

Wait, you say, there must be something good about Daylight Saving Time? Doesn't that extra hour of exposure to sun help combat seasonal affective disorder and let our bodies produce some vital vitamin D? Doesn't the added light at rush hour help prevent traffic accidents? Well, of course, it does! It also gives us all a greater chance of developing skin cancer. In scientific terminology, this is known as "a wash."