As I’m sitting here, another 12” of the white stuff is floating onto our idyllic New England town. With the lights from the street lamps illuminating the snow like dust motes on a hot, sunny day, you can just imagine the thoughts running through my head:

“I’m sick and tired of this [expletive deleted] white stuff!”

“My back still hurts from shoveling the crap from the last storm!”

“Honey, when are the kids going to be old enough to do this for me?”

“That’s it! I’m moving to Florida as soon as I can get the car out of the garage!”

You may be saying to yourself, “serves you right for living in New England, idiot.” Well, this may be true, but I say to you, “you’re lucky you’re not here, or I’d show you the old New England tradition of white-washing.”

If you live in this area of the country, you have a love/hate relationship with the snow. Mostly hate. Sure, everybody loves the white stuff during the holidays. It makes the holidays feel more holiday-like, and offers an opportunity for kids to frolick in the snow, sled, ice skate, make snowmen, and throw snowballs.

But by the end of January, I’m just begging for a warm day. The snow is no longer in its pristine, white state, but is instead a dingy grey. And any day where the temperature creeps above freezing, I’m out in the driveway chopping at the ice with a shovel in a futile attempt to remove the permanent skating rink that has taken up residence where asphalt once reigned supreme.

Or better yet, I’ll try to clear the snow off my roof to prevent ice dams. Ice dams are caused by vicious snow elves that delight in creating huge reservoirs of cold water on your roof. These malignant elves then poke a hole through the roof so the water drains into your walls, ruining the paint or wallpaper. And they only do this in the middle of the night during a freezing rain, which means you get to test your mountaineering skills on an icy slope worthy of a Sherpa while chopping away at a Titanic-sized chunk of ice.

Yes, by the end of January, it’s time to stop. But it doesn’t. New England offers a full winter for its denizens to enjoy. If you live in New England, you’re usually in it for the long haul. A full December to March winter that saps the very life from your soul. Until you see that first bud pop out on the trees. Then, Mother Nature usually tosses out another 12 inches of snow at you just so you know who’s the boss.

Every winter makes me ponder why I’m living in New England at all. It must be a stubborn streak that gets forged into every New Englander’s being as we survive each passing winter. “No matter what, I’m not going to give up! I’m not leaving my New England home even if there’s three feet of snow on April 1st,” (which happened a few years ago). April Fools!

Or maybe, it’s just plain stupidity. In this day and age, there’s really no reason to stick it out. I’m not getting any brownie points from Mother Nature, as evidenced by the hot, sticky summers in New England. If it weren’t for autumn, there’d be very little to look forward to at all, weather wise. For the most part, there’s only three seasons in New England – summer, autumn, and winter – since frigid winter pretty much melts into unbearable summer.

The only joy I get out of winter in New England is when someone from a warmer part of the country comes to visit. And you know who you are. You with your trendy little leather coats and designer shoes. Nothing gives us New Englanders more joy than watching you try to scrape an inch of ice off the windshield of your rental car with a credit card, all while trying to hold the front of your $600 “windbreaker” shut to slow the hypothermia creeping over your body.

My Dad is always threatening to pack up and move south to warmer climates. But I guess I’m just not ready to leave the cold quite yet. I’ve grown accustomed to the aching backs and booger-freezing cold. But if he does decide to go south, I hope he takes the damned snow elves with him.

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Here’s an article I wrote for my local paper a few years ago (my daughter was much younger).  Hope you enjoy it…

Disposable Pets

What a crappy weekend. Fuzzy, my daughter’s beloved pet hamster, croaked. Fuzzy was a Christmas gift from Santa, so he was only with us for a few short months, but in that time he managed to:

• Bite my son’s finger
• Stink up his $100 hamster habitat on a weekly basis
• Keep us up at night with his constant midnight runs on the squeaky hamster wheel

My daughter was, of course, devastated. To a seven-year old girl, losing a pet hamster is a very big deal. Despite the fact that hamsters are nocturnal, and she only saw Fuzzy curled up sleeping during the day, she was deeply in love with the little rodent. And even though she was afraid to pet Fuzzy (because of the finger-biting incident), she wailed like a banshee when she discovered Fuzzy’s tiny corpse.

After calming her down enough so she’d listen, I concocted the following plan:

1. We’ll have a wake to celebrate Fuzzy’s life (after explaining what a wake was)
2. She can invite her friends over to help
3. We’d get a cake for the occasion
4. She could decorate Fuzzy’s “coffin” (a business card box) and make a tombstone (a rock with “Fuzzy” and the date in black magic marker)
5. We’d bury Fuzzy in the backyard near the swing set so he’d be nearby (flushing was out of the question because I’m pretty sure Fuzzy was the world’s fattest hamster)
6. Last, but certainly not least, we’d go look for a replacement for Fuzzy

I’m not a big fan of hamsters. To me, hamsters are cute rats that you put in a cage and ignore until they die. Basically, they’re disposable. But, we needed to fill the void in my daughter’s heart left by Fuzzy’s departure. And besides, my wife was not home (how inconsiderate!) and I needed to kill time to get my daughter’s mind off of Fuzzy’s rotting corpse.

So we headed to the local PETsMART superstore. PETsMART has a large selection of many different types of hamsters. I didn’t realize the wide variety of small rodents that were available for purchase in this country. In addition to the Black Bear, Brown Bear, Golden, and other hamster varieties, there were Rats, Gerbils, Mice, Guinea Pigs, Chinchillas, Ferrets, and Capybara (not really, I’ve just been watching the Animal Channel a little too much lately).

My daughter immediately headed for the only hamster that was awake at that hour of the day (about 11:00 am). This hamster was alternating between spinning frantically on the hamster wheel, and jumping over the backs of the other hamsters that were asleep (which is normal for a hamster). The hamster helper guy assured me that this was because this particular hamster was “hyper.”

After placing the hyper hamster into a cardboard box that he had poked holes in with a ballpoint pen, hamster helper guy explained the two-week guarantee on the hamster. If the new hamster were to die within two weeks, I could bring the hamster corpse in for a refund or a new hamster. It seems that PETsMART considers hamsters disposable as well.

We got the new hyper hamster, dubbed “Fuzzy Too,” home and prepared for the funeral of the first Fuzzy. With the help of her friends, my daughter brought Fuzzy’s coffin (now decorated with an orange, hand-drawn picture of Fuzzy and complete with hamster treats placed in the box for the hamster afterlife) out to the burial ground. I dug a shallow grave, reverently placed the box into the ground, and covered it over with dirt.

After a few short words from my daughter, we retired to the house and had cake and sang along with a SpongeBob SquarePants CD I had purchased a few days earlier (for the kids). Fuzzy Too was safely in his now-clean cage (I’m pretty sure I got all the dead hamster smell out), and the day was a complete success for everyone involved. Except, of course, the original Fuzzy.

For a little while, I was considering digging up the corpse of the original Fuzzy and bringing him back to PETsMART for a replacement. I could off Fuzzy Too without my daughter knowing, and replace it with a new hamster every two weeks to create a kind of perpetual hamster chain. That way, I’d always have a fresh hamster. Now, if I could only come up with some kind of plan to get rid of the wife’s dog . . .

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When I was in high school physics, I learned that there were some immutable laws that governed the physical world. For some reason, I can remember Newton’s Laws as the following (and I’m definitely paraphrasing):

• Newton’s First Law: An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion.
• Newton’s Second Law: The acceleration of an object is dependent upon two variables – the force acting upon it and its mass.
• Newton’s Third Law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Every year, these laws of physics help thousands of high school physics students “discover” that when you roll a steel ball down a ramp, it moves unless you stop it. In addition, if I remember my high school physics correctly, there were other experiments that showed you what happened when things crashed into each other. And I vaguely recollect seeing a short educational film about pushing each other on a frozen pond.

While providing interesting experiments in the workings of the physical world, Newton’s Laws don’t really prepare us much for real life. Instinctively, we pretty much know that something is going to stay put unless you move it, and that something moves faster or slower depending on how much effort you put into it.

Well, have no fear. You’ve come to the right place for useful, real world info. I’ve been married for almost 20 years now, and I’ve learned a few of the Immutable Laws of Marriage. These laws have been proven time again, not only in my marriage but in the marriages of many of my friends. So, without further ado, here they are:

The Law of Free Space

Just as in physics I learned that nature abhors a vacuum, in marriage I’ve learned the Law of Free Space. This Law can be expressed as: wives, pets, and children abhor any free space you may have carved yourself out on your bed.

I have a king-size bed, and every morning I wake perched precariously on the very edge. My wife is jammed against my side, both children are laying across us, and the dog’s butt is in my face. This little nook on the edge of the bed is now formed into the shape of my body. I’m thinking about using it to make a life-size gelatin mold of my back.

The Law of Background Noise

This law concerns the amount of noise generated in a household by your children. Stated simply: If you’re doing something that requires some relative degree of silence, your children will be at their noisiest.

This law is especially easy to observe when you are trying to “work” at home, and are participating on a conference call. The higher the relative importance of the other participants on the call, the more likely your son is to shout, “Daddy, I pooped and I need you to wipe me.”

The Law of Absolute Silence

Closely related to the Law of Background Noise, the Law of Absolute Silence concerns those troubling quiets that sometimes afflict a household. Basically, this Law says that the amount of mischief is inversely proportional to the amount of noise. As a parent, you should never worry about the noise. You must fear the silence.

Recently, I personally evidenced this law in action. I was working in my office and I sensed that something was wrong, but couldn’t put my finger on it. Then, it hit me – it was too quiet. I raced downstairs but it was too late. My son had covered himself from head to toe with magic marker. When asked why he did it, my son said, “I don’t know.”

The Law of Memorization

In marriages, sometimes it’s the little things that matter. The Law of Memorization states that a man’s personal happiness is directly tied to their ability to memorize important dates. Dates like your wedding anniversary, your wife’s birthday, Mother’s Day, etc.

Unfortunately, most men are simply incapable of remembering these dates because their brains are filled with lines from movies and sports trivia. I think I have this one licked though – my anniversary is engraved in my wedding band now.

In my 19+ years of marriage, I have indeed learned many useful Laws that govern successful relationships. Now if I can only discover the secret to getting my son to eat vegetables.

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