Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)
Winter: Time to Celebrate the Great Indoors
Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son. But it might get you through the winter.By Bob Wire, 11-15-10
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| This poor unfortunate girl could be inside, watching TV! (photo of Speaker Wire by Bob Wire) | |
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After a glorious few weeks Indigenous Summer, the weather in the Northern Rockies has pretty much waved off its autumn pit stop is heading straight for the checkered flag of winter. And winter, for me, is the time to celebrate the great indoors.
It’s not that I don’t get outside at all during the months with an R in them. I do. I walk Houdini through the nearby golf course, now that the duffers have all packed away their clubs for the season. He leaves them plenty of golf ball holders that will appear after spring thaw. If there’s a good snowfall, I’ll join the kids for some tubing and sledding on the local hill. I just make sure Barb is waiting for me at the bottom with some Advil, a thermos of spiked hot chocolate, and an asthma inhaler. And snowboarding. There’s always snowboarding.
But what’s the point of working to maintain a comfortable, stimulating environment in your home if you can’t kick back in a comfortable chair with a cold beverage in your mitt and a plate of nachos balanced on your belly, setting down the TV remote long enough to give the finger to Old Man Mother Nature? I read somewhere that we humans spend 98% of our time indoors. I can only guess the other two percent is spent running out to Albertson’s for a jar of Mrs. Renfro’s Mango Habañero Salsa.
I still get plenty of exercise during the winter, especially if my team is televised on Sunday. I have been known to raise my heart rate into the weight loss zone over a bad call during a Dolphins game. I start the game wearing three hats so I have at least two to throw in disgust at the TV. All furniture is pushed back against the walls in the living room, so I have plenty of space to do my interpretive dances, which get more intense when the team is in the Red Zone. You should have seen me when the zebras blew that end zone fumble call against Pittsburgh a couple of weeks ago, costing the Dolphins the game. I was like the Tasmanian Devil, slinging slobber and Clamato beer all over the living room walls. “Sagga fraggem snagga fragga…” (I try to use only Warner Bros. style cussing, to keep from offending the kids, who have probably already left anyway.)
I also get a pretty good aerobic workout on the weekends, when housecleaning shifts into high gear. It’s hard work, and there’s a lot to do. Running up and down stairs, jumping in and out of closets, crawling under beds, it all gets my blood pumping and works different sets of muscles for hours at a time. It can be very strenuous doing all that hiding from Barb, as she’s looking for help with all that housecleaning.
Speaking of exercise, I’ve discovered an easy way to burn hundreds of extra calories a day indoors: keep the beer in the basement fridge. Stairmaster? Lady, I AM the Stairmaster!
Of course, it’s virtually impossible to go five months without leaving the house. Believe me, I’ve tried. But that driveway is not going to shovel itself after a big snowstorm. So I’m ready. Ready with my ergonomic, reinforced, efficiency-curved show shovel. Ready with my Arctic Klondike boots and my Subzero North Face parka. Ready to hack and scoop a narrow path all the way down to the mailbox so I can get to my Netflix movies. Why should I shovel the whole driveway? The cars have four wheel drive for a reason.
I love winter. There are books to be read, board games to be played, movies to be watched, and poker pots to be hauled in. Writing is definitely an indoor sport, as is mosquito-free sex. There are songs to be written and recorded, and pot-luck dinners to attend. It’s not that I’m anti-outdoors. I’ve tried the various outdoor sports we have to offer here in Montana, from ice fishing to snowshoeing, from ice skating to cross-country skiing. I’ll admit that I enjoyed most of them, even got through a couple with only minor injuries. But most of the time, I found myself thinking, why don’t we do this in July, when it’s warmer?
We live in a spectacular part of the country, the Pacific Northwest. We’re blessed with hot temperatures in the summer, and enough cold and moisture in the winter to sustain all kinds of icy, snowy outdoor endeavors. So get those skis tuned up, work those sled dogs out, chain up those tires and wax those snowboards. I’ll be right here, watching. From the warm side of the window.
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Comments
Rising government wages and benefits, all the while property values are down, people are not working private side jobs, so no school this week in soon to become the capital of illiteracy, Oregon. We are a national leader in hunger and unemployment, and soon in criminally under educated kids. But we have the best public employee benefits and retirement in America. So what? A grand daughter just came through the door at O'dark O'clock and is warmly tucked into bed. Daughter in law is off in the Ford Excessive carpooling to work, and son and grandson are off elk hunting in the snow. More than two feet of snow on top of fell and bucked thinning logs, and the leave trees were bending in the wind yesterday and snapping off. Brittle logs and breaking trees means no logging this week.
A veritable winter wonderland out there. And like Mr. Wire, I am on the warm side of the double panes, where old farts belong. Farming will have to wait for better weather, like I am. And kids would be better served inside a classroom looking out, too. Hmmm. A week at Thanksgiving, three weeks at Christmas, a week at Spring vacation, and enough half days and no fridays to clean up another two or three weeks, no school for three months in summer, and the US imports engineers and soft ware programmers. We have even exported our educational opportunity and are importing our educated workers. If the new Congress does not try to fix that, then they will be short termers, as well. Fries with that?