The cold reality of my January escapades

So here we are in the deep freeze dungeon of mid-January where exposed skin can freeze in five minutes. The cold bears down upon us like a giant lead blanket and it will not be moved.

Cars left too long outside in this abominable deep freeze either don’t start at all, or if plugged in do begrudgingly turn over and then bump along on frozen square tires reminiscent of a “Looney Tunes” cartoon or a Hillbilly movie.

Mad dashes from the nice warm house to the garage while holding one’s breath are common.Wiping my dripping nose blob with my mitt less hand and then reaching for the metal garage door handle, which also is at -44C, well, that’s just stupid.

Standing there immobilized and wondering if CAA covers my predicament also is brainless, as is thinking warm spit will help remove my welded fingers.

Forcibly peeling said fingers from cold metal reminded me of how painful it was the first and only time I ripped wax strips off my upper lip.

My moustache, now otherwise invisible to the viewing public thanks to facial hair bleach, suddenly reappears in this hellish cold as a frosted hairy mass during the mad dash from where I park the car at work and remains until all the men in the building have passed me in the hallway at the coffee room. Nice.

The deep-freeze dungeon of January calls to mind the (kick my butt now) question, “why didn’t I book that holiday to Cuba when I had the chance?”

In another monumental lapse of judgment in this lead blanket cold, as I think up ways to burn off the five pounds I’ve gained over the Christmas holidays, I decide to go for a run in my snowshoes down the creek bed.

My face wrapped in scarves with a slit for eyes, I broke into a solid rhythmic jog, lifting one snowshoe above the other. 

Just around the bend I tripped over the twigs sticking out of the ice at a beaver house and did a face plant landing in a contorted mess at the base of the hut. Smarting and ranting, I hoped the heavy “thwack” heard by my nemesis inside the twig tent, as my poundage landed there, would spook them into pulling up stakes. Somehow I doubt it.

By the time I untangled my snowshoes and realigned my spine, the wolves had started to close in for a mid-day snack. However, when I stood up to reveal my steam-frozen headpiece complete with icicles from all the heavy breathing I’d been doing in an effort to untangle myself, the carnivores turned and ran like whelping puppies.

The only thing I can think of that feels better because of this forsaken deep freezing cold is the blistering hot shower taken after my cold-air escapades.

Standing there in the tub as my skin turned fire engine red from toe to crown was heavenly, until it was time to get out and I realized I’d forgotten to replace my bath towel. 

I opened the bathroom door and sprinted buck naked and sopping wet to the towel shelf.

To cop a sentence from Kerry Lynn Dell’s blog “Montana For Real”—“Have you ever stepped onto an icy sidewalk felt both feet fly up in the air and crashed onto the back of your head?”  

That holiday on a Cuban beach looked quite ideal from my prone position on the kitchen floor.

All that I am is measured by the year

“Not what you have, but what you use. Not what you see, but what you choose. Not what seems fair, but what is true. Not what you dream, but what you do. Not what you take, but what you give. Not as you pray, but as you live. These are the things that mar or bless the sum of human happiness.”  

I discovered this beautiful composition in the book, “How to Love,” by Gordon Livingston. Sometimes words just jump off the page and into my soul and these ones certainly did. I printed and framed the piece for my bedroom wall. It smacks of that old familiar tune “To Thine Own Self Be True.”

This week I’m all about “Day 365” and as much as I’d thought beginning a new year at midnight December 31^st would mean a fresh new start, I cannot deny that until I make it past Saturday, January 19^th I won’t truly feel that my new year has begun.

I’ve come to believe that making it to the anniversary date of the first year after any major event in life is an occurrence of legendary proportions and each of us comes to it in different ways. I also have come to believe it is a sacred journey to its crest, no matter how it’s walked.

I’m not sure yet what I’m going to be doing on Saturday, but the closer I get to it, the more I hope I am going to get up at sunrise and live the day as fully as I can. I would be a fool to think that the events of what happened here in my neck of the woods that day one year ago won’t be on my mind. That’s okay. It’s all okay.

I continue to believe that each day I am where I am supposed to be. This conviction carries me. It has carried me through the last 12 months. It carries me in this moment, and this moment is all that I truly know I have in this life.

My friend Patty gave me a bereavement gift last January that I can say without a shred of doubt remains the best gift I have ever received in bad times and in good. It’s a fridge magnet that says “One Day at A Time.”

I’ve tried to live by that code ever since. It takes a lot of the pressure off of projecting myself into tomorrow’s dilemmas and next week’s problems and keeps me grounded right here.

I’ve also been reading the daybook, “The Language of Letting Go,” by Melody Beattie. She’s my nightingale of freedom. There’s not a morning that goes by when she doesn’t impress upon me a valuable lesson about giving up control and the letting in of life as it unfolds before me. These are good things and the good I need will find me when the time is right.

Since January 19, 2012 I have written over 45 columns for this space and I’ve dug deep many times on what it means for me as a survivor left behind by the suicide of a loved one. I wanted to pay forward the German proverb that says, “To bury grief, plant a seed.” I’ve done the best I could.

On Saturday I’m going to think about the road I’ve walked and I’m going to continue to do my best to honor my life, as good as it is, and it is very good. Very good indeed.

In fact, I think I’ll go snowshoeing across one of my snowy fields with my beavertail snowshoes that my dad gave me just before Christmas. The snowshoes once belonged to a fantastic family friend and well- known district auctioneer, the late Rod Salchert.

And as I’m walking along in the cold winter air with the spirits of all the good people I’ve had in my life, I’m going to remember what Melody Beattie said about letting go, and then I’m going to spend my evening sitting by the fire with someone I care about very much.

"I think of letting go as being like throwing a baseball. The problem is I just don't want to let go of the ball. Hanging on to the ball is a temptation. We've got it in our hands. Why not keep it there? At least if we are dwelling on the problem, it feels like we are doing something. But we're not. We're just holding onto the ball, and chances are we are holding up the game.”

A fast draw averts "cat"strophe

“Millie” the cat has been living here for about 13 months and we are joined at the hip. It’s been a rewardingly mutual friendship thus far and her life in this neck of the woods has been luxurious to say the least.

This much I know is true. If I vacuum the floor near where Millie is curled up on her couch pillow, she trusts me enough to know that the loud whir of the machine is not a threat, and she can stay right where she is. Any other cat would be clawing at the door to escape, but not Millie. Millie trusts me.

But just try and get her into a pet carrier and it’s a whole different story.

Monday was my favorite feline’s check up day at the animal clinic. When I woke up that morning at 5 a.m. to her kneading paws on the side of my head and the incessant meowing that smacked of being let out to the ”kitty loo” I smugly and flippantly sparred words with the squinty-eyed annoyance and told her payback would be mine that afternoon when it came time for vaccinations at the vet’s office. 

She blinked back a flat stare, jumped down and rubbed herself along the white skirt ruffle at the bottom of my bed, leaving a sheath of black hair stuck to it before leading me out of the room and to the porch door like a border collie sheep herder.

I followed dutifully, picking a cat hair out of my nostril.

I like to think of myself as a planner organizer. And while I’m okay with uncharted waters and someone else making the decisions that involve me, to a degree I like to have a handle on the ins and outs of my daily life. Who doesn’t?

Planning a smooth trip to the animal clinic is among the things I want to go my way. But we’re talking cats here.

A few days prior I had had a brilliant thought. Straightaway I went to the garage and found the pet carrier. I set it out in the porch with the door propped open, hoping Millie would wander by and investigate, perhaps taking up shop in the thing during siesta time. She’d get used to the cat cove and everything would run smoothly come clinic day.

She took the bait—sort of.

When I walked by on my way to laundry the next day, indeed Millie was sitting inside the cage but was heaving up a hairball and the chunky barf soup of her morning cat chow. I should have known right then it was her way of hinting that the pet carrier scheme wasn’t going to fly. Being the eternal optimist that I am, I shrugged it off and cleaned up the mess.

Monday afternoon I scooped her up in my arms, cooed softly to my furry little friend, carried her to the porch and tried to put her headfirst into the carrier.

Lynn M. Osband penned, “The mathematical probability of a cat doing exactly what it wants, is the one scientific absolute in the world.”

Indeed. She must have tried to put her cat in one of these contraptions too.

Suddenly all four cat legs jettisoned outward as if I’d just pulled the cord on a parachute and her claws shot forth like sharp knives on Freddy Krueger’s glove.

Suddenly I was holding a writhing devil cat with a possessed soul straight out of “The Exorcist” movie as all four legs began spinning backwards against the inevitable opening of the dreaded confinement capsule.

Millie’s head spun around and I caught a glimpse of those bulging wild eyes and a flash of carnivorous molars amidst the moaning sound coming from inside of her.

I held her straight out in front of me and with a skill torn right out of an old western gunslinger film, I pulled the “Plan B” towel from over my shoulder and quick-wrapped the cat and had her in the cage with the door closed before she knew what had happened.

Just call me Nicole Franks.