Thumper Thinks Out Loud

Ice, Ice, Baby

We had warning last night it was coming, freezing rain coating the streets, driveways, and porches, that would solidify even further during the cold night hours to form a slick layer of ice. We pulled the truck into the garage so the Spouse Thingy wouldn’t have to spend half an hour scraping the windshield off at 5 am, enjoying the knowledge that all but one of our neighbors would be out there in the cold, trying to create a decent sized visual field on their respective vehicles.

Wives were surely complaining to their husbands, “Their garage is cleaned out enough to park. When are you going to clean out ours?”

Sooner or later one of the husbands will wise up and point out that gender knows no bounds when it comes to cleaning out a garage; after all, most of them saw me hauling stuff in and out, creating ample truck space soon after we moved in. They know who did the grunt work.

Heh.

Like the weathermen promised, there was ice when I got up this morning. While Hank had his breakfast, I grabbed a king sized sheet and went outside, covering the back patio so that he wouldn’t slip. The guy that lives behind us was outside smoking his cigar, watching me, with that look of “what the heck are you doing?” And later, “you did that for your dog?”

Well, yeah. Hank is very old and falls a lot. A slip on the ice might be the last move he makes. I’d rather ruin a sheet than break the dog. And new sheets might be nice. Something bright purple. That would be cool.

Hank dutifully used the sheet as a mat, walked across it to the lawn, and walked back, avoiding the cement on either side. When he was done he came back in to the warmth of the living room, curled up on his big fluffy bed, and went to sleep. I peeked outside occasionally to see how bad it was getting; it never got really bad, but an hour later my neighbor was back outside with his dog. And a sheet on the patio.

It’s nice to start a trend.

By late afternoon it warmed up enough to melt the ice, but after eating dinner, when Hank goes out again, he waited at the back door, and looked up at me expectantly.

“There’s no more ice,” I told him. “Go on. It’s okay.”

He looked up.

I went and got the sheet, and spread it out for him again. As I was pulling the edges out, my foot hit a slippery patch and I almost went down. So I apologized to him for not wanting to get the sheet, his eyes are obviously still better than mine.

Or he’s just spoiled, and it was a coincidence.

Tomorrow it’s supposed to be near 40 degrees, so we’ll see if he sits by the door and waits for the sheet.

Watch him pee on the floor. Or worse.

At least there won’t be any ice. I need to go places, and I’m too big a wuss to drive on it. The effects of having flipped a truck over on the ice, I suppose.

But I’m still a wuss.