LIKE A RUNAWAY SLED

My front yard property on Monday,

after the first snowfall

I felt really rotten this morning.

How rotten did you feel, Jon?

I felt like Ethan Frome after his last sleigh ride with Mattie. A free-fall with a crash.

Wow. Elaborate.

My day was off to a bad start even before I got out of bed. My eleven-month-old kitty Scruffy always wakes me up. She climbs up on the bed headboard and jumps on me. Today, she climbed up on the headboard and......sneezed on me. Right in the face. A liberal shower of feline germs.

I'm talking abundant liberal. Not politics liberal.

I grabbed my cell phone and snapped this photo just before she sneezed. It's not upside down. That's exactly how she looked from my vantage point.

Get a kitten, they said.
It'll be fun, they said.

Yesterday, I somehow threw my back out of whack. As I was crawling out of bed this morning the spasms were so bad that I fell flat on the floor. 

To compound matters, I've been having severe - and I mean severe - pain in my toes.
Yes, you heard it correctly. Toes. All ten of them.

Heck, the last time I ever had pain in my toes, it was because somebody had been biting them. No need to panic, it happened long ago when I was young and soused.
This time, to my knowledge, no teeth were involved. 

I was in such agonizing pain from my back and toes that I couldn't get up off the floor. As I was crawling towards the bedroom door - wondering how I was going to wash my face - Scruffy suddenly decided to play. She grabbed one of my bare feet and dug ALL of her sharp claws into it - relentlessly hanging on as I crawled. My screams of agony echoed through the mountains......and it's rumored that they were heard in Nashville.

After I recovered enough to resume thinking, I realized that my toes hurt because I had been wearing two pairs of tight socks to keep my feet warm.
The socks must have completely cut off the circulation. Fortunately my toes didn't turn black and drop off.

So how are you doing now, Jon?

I'm still limping, but I'm wearing looser socks.

You're weird, Jon.

Weird, but immensely entertaining.

My yard on Monday during the first snowfall

as seen from my back porch

The cold weather is the Big News (capitalized for emphasis). I'm a Tennessee virgin. I honestly hadn't expected the winters here to be so harsh.

Let's see. It snowed on Monday, I think. And Tuesday, I think. And this morning for sure. Eight inch accumulation.The high temperature today was a brisk 16.

Tonight (it's only 8:00 p.m. as I'm writing this) the temperature is supposed to plummet to minus 15. I said minus. That's cold enough to kill a penguin. Or Al Gore. Aw, settle down. I couldn't resist.

Hey, I'm writing this humorous stuff while I'm in an incredibly bad mood. Could you imagine how funny I'd be if I actually felt good?

View from my office window

(one of the spare bedrooms)

This frigid weather is definitely impeding all my activities. I'm not complaining. I've lived through winters far worse than this. I'm just stating a fact. I can't unpack any of the things in the garage. It's so cold out there that I can only tolerate it for a minute. Or less.

Late last night I ran out of kitty litter. Not for me. For the cats. Fortunately I had another big bag, but I'd left it out in the car. And I had to force myself to go out and get it.

The eight inches of snow had turned into solid ice. My entire property is on a steep mountainside. I immediately slipped on the ice and slid all the way down to my car. In retrospect, that's probably how I hurt my back.

If the car wasn't there to break my slide, I would have undoubtedly ended up in Kentucky. The door on my car was frozen shut and I literally had to pry it open, using my fingernails to crack the ice. By then my fingers, toes, and family jewels were completely numb. I honestly couldn't feel my balls for several hours.

Don't try to visualize this. It will corrupt you.

Carrying a 50 lb. bag of kitty litter back up to the house while walking on ice wasn't easy.
I only had two thoughts:

1. God, please don't let me fall again.

2. Those damn cats shit more than I do!

Bosco and Scruffy

looking at the snow from kitchen window

Note:
Ever since I started this new blog Lone Wolf Concerto I've noticed that readership is sparse and seems to be dwindling rapidly. Many (but not all) of my faithful friends who used to read Lone Star Concerto have vanished.

 I've thought about abandoning this blog, but I'm addicted to it. I enjoy distributing my thoughts for public consumption - whether the public is there or not. Most of all I enjoy entertaining myself.

Rose from Canada (Life After Fifty) told me that she's been having an enormous amount of trouble leaving comments on my blog. I haven't had any other complaints about this. I checked the settings and they seem to be okay.