Friday Snow Day

[fflo]

It's still snowing lightly. The sun just poked out for a minute. Now there are crows about. A lot of 'em.

Earlier I was sittin' here typing away about being snowed in AND plowed in & what I was maybe gonna do about that, and when. I got to digressing, as I will, while out the window there was my neighbor B across the way, takin' care of business with his shovel.

I may have never had a friend who takes more pleasure in taking care of business than B does. He was out there doing his usual bang-up job, and I was back-and-forth with O about my strategy for the other (not-my-friend) neighbor's snowplow guy's wall of packed snow standing between the Subaru and Sweet Freedom, and whether a pick-axe might come in handy, if anyone had one, and we also talked some job talk talk, and then I was typing some more. Then suddenly I saw B and his ergonomically advanced implement making their way into the foot of the drive, and then proceeding to attack the very wall I'd been contemplating.

I went to the door, blessed his heart, and shouted to him not to finish before I got some more clothes on to join him.

There was so little left to do by the time I was chipping in ---on my own snow--- that I cleaned off the car & swept the stoop & even did the steps & walk on the other side, all the way to the bird feeder, which is now refilled.

Even the little birdies benefit from his kindness.

- + - + -

Though the lead-in to it is now lost to history, I'll leave you the piddly story of olde I was typing, from a time long ago, when my first gf and I were living together, and we ordered a pizza. Something had been going on that day that had had us on edge. We were emotionally spent, or somehow compromised like that. I imagine we'd both been crying, though that might not be true. Fighting, surely. Both wholly worn out, but nothing resolved. Anyway, we decided to order a pizza. So we called the place on the corner where we usually got subs---Never On Sunday. In addition to a jukebox that offered the 45 of "Never On Sunday" (from the movie by the same name) (what you didn't do on Sunday in the film wasn't sell gyros), they had a small game room. I ate many a sub because I wanted to spend a little time with the likes of Pinbot pinball, while onions fried.

So that day, maybe thinking food would help, we got it together to descend to the street & go down to the corner & pick up the pizza & bring it back & carry it up to our little dramaland. And then we opened the box & saw [ominous sound effect here]: it had pepperoni on it. It was supposed to be vegetarian. Onions & peppers, maybe. Anyway, it wasn't supposed to have pepperoni. She was vegetarian, and I don't like pepperoni on pizza. And the pepperoni was all greasy, and pools of its grease were all over.

We were both so spiritually exhausted---it probably went without saying that there was no way we were going to go get a new pizza. And no way we were going to eat it as it was, even plucking off the offending discs. So there it sat, and we cried. After a while, we called my mother.

I could tell she didn't understand why it was such a tragedy for us. But she understood that it was. And I halfway knew even then that part of what we wanted from her, and wanted from each other, was a little shared recognition that everything sucked, and that there was so much to be sad about, and that we were.

And I also kinda knew, even then, that it was our choice, to take the lousy pizza as part of the vast inevitable crappiness of things, rather than to take the pizza & march it back for a replacement. At the time I thought it was mostly about neither of us being willing to confront the pizza people.

- _ - _ -

In the Small Things That Aren't Small Things Department, I was out drinking last night. Maybe it wasn't "just the ticket," but it was definitely a ticket. I remember my companion saying something like "Some nights need to be gobbled up."

And so it was.

_ - _ - _

Now I'll be getting back to my snow-day "L Word" marathon. Thanks, kohkae! Much appreciated.

Comments

[disclaimerwill.livejournal.com]

I can totally relate about the pizza thing. In late 1999, I spent the weekend with my girlfriend down at the Center for Creative Studies dorm in Detroit, and she and her roommates had been having a thoroughly miserable, sleepless week of preparing for finals. Everyone was upset and sniping at each other and just bummed all around, so we decided to order in some pizzas from a Little Caesar's or some other crappy chain joint around the corner. Saturday Night Live came and went, and finally I called them back just as they were closing, and they said that they'd decided not to fill the order, because someone in the dorm had refused delivery a couple weeks ago. And that made us all feel so small and helpless in the face of an uncaring universe that we all just started crying like it was the worst example of man's inhumanity to man in history.

Luckily, I can totally relate about the snow-clearing thing, too! Nice neighbors are cool to have, and I'm glad you have one!