Navigating the winter doldrums
January-February 2025
(photo by Kaboompics.com via Pexels.com)
by Margo Oxendine, Contributing Columnist
All the holiday hoopla is over, and we are now facing January. Is there a more drab, gray month? I don’t think so.
Yet, winter does have its attributes. There’s snow, first of all. I love snow, as you know, so I am always excited about the possibility of snow in January. I don’t usually have to drive anywhere in the snow, which makes me very happy. I am lucky to work at home, with a furnace and a cozy gas fireplace. Provided the heat has not gone out. If it has, there’s always another sweater and a lap robe.
I am lucky enough to have a carport, so my car rarely has to be cleaned off, should I find it necessary to get out on the slippery roads. Considering my “luck” (all of it bad) with cars this past year, I will go out of my way to stay home.
When I must drive, one thing bugs me like no other: inconsiderate people who do not clean off the tops of their vehicles. That means that, more often than not, a gust of wind will blow that snow and ice back onto my car and the windshield. So please clean off the tops of your vehicles!
I try not to put off my daily walk when it snows. In fact, there are some wonderful things about it, besides the fact that my snow boots are too cumbersome for walking. What I love is to look at the wildlife tracks in the snow. Raccoons, foxes, dogs, bobcats, deer, and even once, a rare bear track, even though that bear was supposed to be snoozing.
But I must choose my steps very carefully. Some have ice underneath, and I go skidding. I have fallen more than once but have always — so far — been able to haul myself back up. I fear falling and then wallowing in a frozen mound until the rare car comes down the lane.
I always try to buy more groceries than I need during winter. I don’t know when or if I’ll get back out, and heaven forbid I run out of, say, half-and-half, or chicken salad, or Lindy’s ices. We don’t have anything like Door Dash out here in the rural hinterlands.
One wintry night after a particularly blizzard-like snow, my mother and I piled into my sister’s small four-wheel drive truck and headed to Covington for groceries and Chinese food. Did I mention the truck was small? Well, when it came time to get back inside for the trip home, I couldn’t make it. We had to enlist the help of a perplexed stranger to push me into the truck before we could get on our way. It was a tight ride.
Another time, when I finally had my own 4WD (that I didn’t yet know how to operate), a friend and I headed to Covington for groceries. It was 10 degrees below zero. Yet, out trudges my friend to the car lugging a cooler! He seemed offended when I ribbed him about it. Apparently, he has an innate fear of spoiled food. But I honestly don’t think there was any danger that day.
At least I no longer have to shovel out my driveway. The one day I slipped while shoveling, knocked myself out, and lay there in a frozen heap, unconscious, was enough for me. Thank heavens someone noticed “a pile of something in Margo’s driveway” and called the rescue squad. When I came to and saw the surrounding rescuers hefting me onto the gurney, my first thought was, “Oh geez, now they’re going to guess how much I weigh!”
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