Everything Green Is White Again and Reminiscing

Mother Nature pulled a good one on us overnight. The local forecasters said we could be in for another blast of winter, and they were right. What was green yesterday is white today. That's right, last week's near 60 degree temperatures have given way to the low 30's and the grass and trees are covered with snow.

The sidewalk and street in front of my house.

Yesterday there were robins singing in these trees.

School is cancelled today, too. The snow isn't deep but the roads are slushy in some spots and slippery in others. It's a good thing I got the windows washed and the screens in place, eh? Pretty sneaky, Mother Nature!

Reminiscing

I'm sick of looking at the snow sticking to my freshly washed window screens, so I'm going to reminisce about sun filled carefree days of times past....

Years ago, around the time we were married, our closest friends were Kevin and Karen. Kevin lived in the apartment next to ours, and Karen was a good friend of his. We spent many Saturday nights having dinner and drinking wine with them at Kevin's apartment or ours. We would talk and laugh until the wee hours of the morning. It was always fun.

Karen had a quick witted sense of humor. We liked her from day one. The first time we met was over breakfast at Kevin's apartment. After introductions, the conversation went something like this:

Karen - "Did you guys see that green car in your parking lot? What a piece of crap!"

Me - "Oh, you mean our car?"

Karen, without missing a beat - "It's a really nice piece of crap. I meant that as a compliment, I really like it."

It wasn't really our car, I was just messing with her. And then:

Karen - "I stopped at the gas station on the corner. The guy that works at the register is an idiot."

Me - "That's my dad."

Karen - "He's a really nice idiot."

How can you not respect a sense of humor like that? We were friends immediately.

That summer, the four of us planned a trip to Cedar Point (an amusement park in Ohio). It was incredibly hot and humid that day but we had a blast riding the roller coasters together. When we got off the "Magnum", the man behind Kevin and Karen's car said something had hit him in the face during the ride. That was when we noticed the combs Karen had used to pull her hair back were missing.

I wouldn't get on the Witches Wheel or any of the spinning rides because they make me sick to my stomach. Karen tried to persuade me, but I wouldn't even consider it.

"You won't get sick, they don't go that fast." She said.

"I can't, I'll puke." I said.

So while Mr. Willoughby and I waited, Kevin and Karen rode most of the spinning rides. After the final ride, Karen started looking a little green.

"I need a place to sit down and close my eyes. The spinning and the heat are making me sick."

We were looking for a park bench or picnic table but Karen saw a patch of grass and trees next to a building and wanted to lie down in the shade (I have pictures, but I thought she might kill me if I posted them). We stood around for a while waiting for her to cool off when she suddenly popped up and crawled into the shrubs on the side of the building and threw up. To her horror and our amusement, we realized that there were windows on the other side of the shrubs. The building was a restaurant and she had just given a table of diners front row seats to her performance. We couldn't stop laughing. She got up, wiped her mouth, smiled and nodded to the the people in the window. I can still see the expression on their faces. I'll bet they tell that story all the time. We still do.