One-Horse Open Sleigh

Frankly, a sleigh would have been a far more appropriate vehicle to use today than my trusty Escort. I’m not saying that the Escort didn’t do a yeoman’s job; indeed it met or beat expectations at every hairy intersection and daunting hill. But snow clean up is far from complete in my little corner of the world and the roads are, for the most part, still fairly nasty.

My company opened two hours late today, so like the trooper I am I heeded the clarion call and headed on in at my usual appointed hour. In all honesty, I’d have had to get up and go out anyhow, since my car was slated to be inspected today and I didn’t want to have to try and reschedule that before the end of the month. To my dismay, the first thing that greeted me when I looked out the bedroom window this morning was the fact that it was fricking snowing again. They say we won’t get more than an inch of it this morning, but enough’s enough. Surfaces are already cold and all the snow is “sticking”. After so painstakingly clearing off my car last night, I had to brush it off yet again this morning, and if it doesn’t stop soon, I’m guessing I’ll have to brush it off yet again this evening when I get ready to leave. Whatever childlike joy I found in the snowfall yesterday has now definitely been replaced with exasperation and the need to add more four-letter words to my vocabulary to adequately describe my current level of frustration.

Last night The Socialist asked me if I had any Chapstick. I use petroleum jelly instead (I find it works better for me) so I had to tell him I had none. He went on to complain that he’d had two tubes of Chapstick, but had just used one up. When he went to get the other, it was missing. Both he and I knew what had happened to it. Kitten.

For some reason she has always been entranced by tubes of Chapstick. Given half an opportunity, she will steal them, even if they have been purposely left in a relatively inaccessible place. The Socialist had looked everywhere: under beds, cupboards, sofas, desks. The Chapstick had simply vanished this time. The poor man had been outside shoveling much of the day, and his lips were really sore. He got out a penlight, and started checking one last time under the sofa and loveseat. He mentioned casually there were a few fuzzy mouse toys under there, but no Chapstick to be seen. I suggested that he try tipping the loveseat back, and let me check underneath. Neither one of us expected that to yield anything, but desperate times lead to desperate measures.

Sure enough, dead center under the saggy part of the love seat, was his Chapstick. With it were about five fuzzy mouse toys. How the kitten managed to stuff them that far under the love seat is anybody’s guess. I reached under and rescued everything, and then The Socialist tipped the sofa for me. Yet seven more fuzzy mouse toys! The Socialist then got the yardstick and swept under the dining room cabinet. Another two fuzzy mouse toys and a ping-pong ball were added to the collection from that source. In all, fourteen fuzzy mice, a ping-pong ball and a tube of Chapstick were retrieved.

Kitten, of course, watched these proceeding with rapt interest. She made an attempt to get to the pile of fuzzy mice twice while I was gathering the collection, but I held her off both times. In the end she got one fuzzy mouse to play with, and the rest were put away in the toy drawer for future use. At least I finally found out where all those mice she stole went to from when she broke into the toy box in December.