Who doesn't like to go ice skating in their shoes in the dark on a hill?

No, there still isn't any snow on the ground. I hear it is coming but, like the four horsemen of the apocolype, I just don't believe in it anymore.

So, when I opened the back door and headed out to catch the bus this morning, imagine my surprise to discover that there had been freezing rain last night. This realization registered in my brain as I lay on my back, sprawled into "old lady splits". (These are the splits that are neither intentional nor elegant but are sometimes a harbinger of a fractured hip).

After elegantly shouting "FUCK!" I tried to stand and realized that no matter where I placed a foot, the entire earth had been covered in a slick pool of ice as I so innocently slept in my nice warm bed.

The situation wouldn't have been so irritating if I had not been running late and the bus was, no doubt, passing my stop as I lay wallowing in the miracle that is Mother Nature.

I'm sure you've seen film of situations like this, where a person can be standing entirely stationary yet they are slowly sliding on the ice. That was me as I tried to gain my footing on the sloping sidewalk next to my house. I never realized just how sloping it was until this morning.

As I gained the grass in the front lawn, I watched the bus go by. My second chance to catch it was to hurry down to Superior St and catch it as it finished the loop in my neighborhood. Notice I said two very funny words there..."hurry" and "down".

With all of the grace and aplomb of a mincing, flamingly gay penguin, I waddled quickly down to Superior St. I kept to the grass when I could and barely missed getting my eye poked out with tree brances that jumped out at me in the dark. When I reached the cross-streets and finally the long stretch of sidewalk at Superior St, I shuffled along knowing that right as I turned the corner and reached the bus stop, the bus would go flying past me. I would be forced to live at the bottom of a very icy hill until the spring thaw. Perhaps I could sell matches? Like in that story? That had a happy ending, didn't it?

But Barney Fife was the bus driver today. I kid you not, there is a DTA bus driver that wears the old DTA uniform that has a hat just like Barney. And after making this connection in my brain and laughing to myself, I found out what his name really is...Barney!

So, Barney picked me up and I didn't have to sell matches until the spring thaw.

And snow is allegedly coming.

And do I hear approaching horse's hooves?