BIizzard Time!

Rolled out of bed.
Ann's birthday today.
Had a gift from Maeve, her dog, and me. 
(Family party for her on Sunday.)
Pulled off longjohns and checked out the window for first snowflakes.
They had already begun.
Pulled on undies, snowsox, jeans and two sweatshirts. Pulled down a beanie over my furrowed brow.
Hurried downstairs for coffee, awaiting Ann's arrival.
(We have to drive to New Hampshire for Maeve's six month check up and vaccinations...her vet lives there and is waiting for us.)
Get leather bomber jacket, gloves, snowboots on over everything else. Put Maeve's leash on. Maeve is terribly excited, we are going "somewhere". (I have also reminded her it is her "Mom"'s birthday.)
I do not mention the vet visit...

We wait.
We wait.
We wait and sweat.
We wait and just as I'm peeling off layers and almost passing out from heat stroke, Ann arrives.
We pile out to car.
We slide out of the snowy driveway.
Big silver flakes the size of corn chips are tumbling down the road in front of us.
Few cars.
Fewer people.
Maeve dances on the back seat, still not sure where we are going but glad to be going anywhere --especially with us.
(Ann has thanked me for the eagle bracelet we gave her--the female eagle woman of our clan--but doesn't seem overly impressed....oh well...more gifts on Sunday.)

We make good time to the vet's.
Maeve takes a doggy dump outside. Ann picks it up with a doggie dump bag. She goes in with Maeve. This time, I'm left out in the car.
A man with a terrible cough, hacks and spits, lights a cigarette and starts yelling into his cell phone one foot from the Jeep. (He has the entire parking lot to make the call--but he has to stand one foot from my face, outside the window of the car, to make his call.) His coat is open. His baseball hat is on backwards. He smokes and hacks and shoots a lugie into a pristine snowbank, meanwhile screaming at his girlfriend...
I try to watch the snow and think of dogs and beaches and white sand.

Ann comes out.
Maeve's heart is good. She didn't bite the vet. In fact, he finally got the guts to trim her nails--which pisses me off as I've had to take her in once a month for the last year because he is afraid to trim them! I guess when Ann told him what we're doing in Gardner with the dog he got embarrassed.
She's put on a pound but is bouncy and healthy and no one thought she would make it this long.
She licks my face and reminds me of every human I know with that same "Yay, I'm outta there!" goofiness after getting out of the doctor's office.
We drive home in increasing foggy snow.
The light is like the inside of a dirty cotton ball.
The cold pounds into my bones, even with the heater on.
I cradle doggie meds and a litter bag filled with my used kleenex. Ick.
We stop for gas.
Fifty people lined up like it's a Zombie Apocalypse....Ann pumps her gas and we head home.

At home, dog jumps out.
I head inside. Gotta get another warmer jacket and pick up another new prescription.
Ann is headed to a house auction. "It'll be filled with house flippers from Boston in this blizzard, but I want to at least see what's up..." Her friend from work will attend with her, as well as niece Mer, who, one day, will surely inherit any house Ann buys.
I pull off a coat.
I pull on a coat.
I blow my nose, filling my jacket pockets keys, gloves, money and kleenex.
I head out, alone.

The snow is filtering down in slanty sheets. Behind the clouds, somewhere, a yellow sun beats down. It is eerie and quiet and still freezing.
The car starts.
I head for the drugstore.
On the radio, the Mamas and the Papas sing me down the street...."a winter's day...."