neurotwitch

sugar daddies, slo-pokes, other goodness ... snow

Stanley sent me a link to Hard-To-Find Grocer, with lots of stuff I thought disappeared long ago. They have Sugar Daddy suckers, and better yet, Slo-Pokes! No Bonomo Turkish Taffy though. In the store, they even sell Aqua Velva, Brylcreem, and Smith Bros. Wild Cherry Cough Drops (which made having a cold almost worth it to a seven year old).

He also sent me this blast from the past: TV Cream’s Top 100 Toys. #38 is Etch-a-Sketch, #35 is the Spirograph. I loved the concept of the Spirograph, but never could get the bloody thing to work right. I don’t even remember what other toys were on my xmas list other than I rarely asked for a doll. My favorite xmas gift of childhood was a Snow White watch. I loved that watch, with its yellow band. I wish I still had it. It came with a ceramic Snow White.

SNOW: 2 TO 4 INCHES MY ASS
At any rate, we’re still in Massachusetts. We didn’t plan to be here still. We planned to be back home in Norwalk a couple of hours ago. Having got caught up in horrible traffic on the Sunday after Thanksgiving when we left mid-afternoon, we decided to wait until our usual departure time, around 7:00 or 8:00 pm, to head back. The weather reports were a couple of inches of snow. No big deal, sloppy, a headache even, but we have good tires.

More like six inches when we left at 7:00ish. Kate, my niece, had just returned from a visit with friends and told us the roads were treacherous. We decided to give it a whirl since I was scheduled for a physical at 9:15 am Monday that I really didn’t want to miss (I scheduled it ten months ago. Ten months I had to wait!) We figured if we could get to the Mass Pike, we’d be ok.

We didn’t even make it half a mile. Cars were fishtailing while going five miles per hour. Turning onto the road toward Natick Center was scary enough to make me have to pee—there is a church on that corner and I thought we’d end up in the first pew. Going up one hill took an eternity. All I could think of were those stretches by the Charles River and a cold, watery grave. We gave it up and headed back to my sister’s house, where she promptly said, “I told you so” while laughing. But we figured a physical wouldn’t do me much good if we were maimed or dead. Stanley would’ve tried it if I’d insisted, but I grew up in a state where you develop a healthy, lifelong respect for snow (Michigan). In some types of snow, there’s traction and driving may be slow, but it’s fairly safe. This snow is not that type of snow—it’s very fine snow that doesn’t pack because it’s too cold out, so no way to get traction.

Funny thing is, if we’d left mid-afternoon this time, we would’ve had a rough time of it on the Mass Pike, but there was no snow at that time in Connecticut. Jeff, my brother-in-law, made it to Norwalk (to visit his brother and to see an old friend up from Texas) and called to let us know it was ok. At least now my sister won’t have to worry about starting the snowblower—Stanley can do that!

Now all I have to do tomorrow is figure out how to reschedule my physical without having to wait months and months. Damn.

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