Why So Cold and Dark

 Why So Cold and Dark?
I’ve never been a huge fan of the cold and snow, but when you add the shoetened daylight hours, it becomes a triple threat to my happiness. As a couch potato I don’t like the shoveling of snow from the driveway, tha porch, and the porch stairs. I guess I could become a hermit over the winter months. I have to clear away the snow and ice to prevent another fall like I did in 2015.  My driveway became slick when a thin layer of water lay on top of a patch of ice. My feet flew out frm under me. I fell onto my back and the back of my head bounced on the ice. I’m not sure if I lost consciousness, but I lost a lot of memory of exactly what happened, but my daughter Anna Prinkey tells me I came to the door of her bedroom saying, “I think I need help.”
Much of that day I still can’t remember. I only recall small snatches of going the Frick Hospital in Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania. I’ve retained a very small thought of the CT scan and a few recollections of the ambulance ride to Pittsburgh. Some of the nurses and techs from Frick were olld friends and I can’t recall which ones they were and what they did for me.
The worst thing about winter for me that makes the darkness and cold worse is the wind. It so often bites and makes the cold and snow turn blizzardlike. Burrr, I dislike the hought of being forced to stay inside when the roads get drifted and dangerous to drive on. I live on a side road that is less travelled and less well maintained. Much of the roadway crosses open fields and has many steeper hills to navigate. Some of the hills have a curved approach that prevents me to get up any speed to shoot up the hill.
A couple of winters the transportation department’s snowplow became stranded in a drift and they had to bring out a snow-fan truck to free it and another year the drifts became so widespread and deep that they brought in a machine with a scoop shovel to open the road.
I pray that we can escape some of the more intense cold, the more extreme snow storms, and the heavier wind storms. I tease that Canada needs to keep their freezer doors closed, but it does have an edge of truth.