Global Warming? Bah! Humbug!

While New Yorkers were quaffing local wines al fresco at Long Island vineyards, or loading up on antiques and ice cream in New Hope, PA (I read all about it in Friday's "Escapes" in the NYT; grrr...), we here in the flyover zone have been freezing our patooties off.

Yesterday at 9am, when I took my darling dog out for her morning constitutional, it was -5F (that's FIVE DEGREES BELOW ZERO! FAHRENHEIT!!!), with an inch of new snow on top of the piled-up remains of the last three storms. This morning, it was a balmy 9 degrees (yesterday's high) and snowing, with a couple of inches of new powder squeaking underfoot.

It's still snowing lightly; tonight's forecast is for below-zero temps. Tomorrow we're having a heat wave, with the high predicted to be near twenty. Oh joy.

Locals keep telling me that this sort of weather "never" happens; that it's been nearly 25 years since they've seen so much snow stick around for so long in Denver. Talk about cold comfort!

One of the circles of hell is having a dog with kidney problems; it's even more hellish during frigid weather. It seems that every time I start to get nice and warm, it's time to take Jenny out again. Normally, at moments of desperation I let her out to water a far(ish) corner of our little yard. But she's too persnickety to (1) pick her way through the snow away from the shoveled path between door and gate or (2) relieve herself in said path. (Male dogs, I've noticed, are not persnickety at all. They'll go anywhere.)

I let Jenny out the front door yesterday morning, but all she did was sit by the gate while I hurriedly fumbled on about 37 layers of clothes. This morning I didn't bother letting her out, so she whined frantically while I fumbled. (Meanwhile, Max the Cat keeps standing by the door and staring at me expectantly, but when I open it and he gets a whiff of arctic air, he pulls his head in like a turtle and scurries off to someplace warm.)

In summation:
It's "climate change." Anyone who says "global warming" is asking to be pushed into a snowdrift.

Time to take Jenny out...