Whoever Said There’s No Snow in Hell Obviously JUST CAME FROM THERE

The following is posted with full understanding that family and friends living in Denver, Salt Lake City, Angelfire, Albuquerque and anywhere in the Midwest are completely entitled to laugh their asses off at us and tease us mercilessly. Go right ahead.

Hey God? Seriously. ENOUGH with the damn snow already. Cut this shit out.

I don’t even know how the rest of the country has been able to cope. Two inches of snow falls here and it might as well be the end of the free world. The speed in which people will scatter from work at the barest glinting of snow still floors me – the first time I experienced it I was standing in the middle of building 44 at 3pm, watching a systematic frenzy of computers shutting down, coats flying off the hooks and everyone yelling get home, get the hell home, before it’s TOO LATE!

People freak out about snow here, is what I’m saying. And I used to laugh at them. Hard.

Until Trav and I went to a certain Seahawks game that got so much snow they had to pull out giant brooms to sweep lines on the field TWICE and we never once stopped to think, “hmm, this might affect our commute. Maybe we should go”. Instead, we thought, “hey let’s go grab another free sandwich and a coffee – this vendor sponsored suite thing is pretty swanky” and left with 6 minutes on the clock. Because after all, we don’t want to get stuck in traffic. Trav and I breezed down the cold, snow-free highway with not a single car or snowflake in sight and made it all the way to Bellevue while listening to the AM Radio stations cry about the snow, THE SNOW, my god, ALL THE SNOW! and thinking to ourselves, “weenies.”

Yeah. Four miles later we hit a wall of cars, three inches of snow and the lost freeway to the third Ice Age. Both of us driving separate cars, we juggled with our cell phones calling each other back and forth trying to figure out how to get the hell off the freeway, away from all these morons, and hey, Trav? Let’s get off right here because I know exactly where we are and we can just take the backroads because GAH. I am NOT sitting in this retardedness.

We took the backroads. And then I realized with a great amount of terror that some sick city planner put all these fucked up HILLS everywhere and it makes it OH MY GOD ARE YOU KIDDING ME I’M NOT GOING DOWN THAT when you skid past every alternate route and find not a single one of them doesn’t involve a 45 down degree angle covered in 3 inches of ice-slicked DEATH.

This was our driveway last week under three brand-spankin’ new inches of snow:

Ok. So maybe that’s more like, an inch right there. But we did get three inches in one day last week, the low point of which I witnessed while standing on my porch in pjs and slippers. In the midst of propping the screen door open with my butt and trying to shove a 40 pound USPS box of dinnerware through the front door, I watched a resident of the house just left of the blue & brown pictured above attempt to drive up his driveway, make it half way, back up an entire block and then GUN it all the way up the street into his garage like some kind of heat seeking missle.

Honestly, I don’t know how he didn’t drive straight through his house. I’m inclined to think that anywhere else in the free world three inches is not this much of an issue. But no, this is Seattle – where it RAINS, NOT SNOWS, BUT RAINS, ok, God? IT RAINS HERE, and this is a LAW OF NATURE that should be observed without exception because no one here is prepared to deal with snow, in any amount, at all. EVER.

So when we opened our garage the other day and faced the prospect of MORE FUCKING SNOW, we knew there wasn’t much to do besides fling our hands to the sky in resignation. Travis handled it a little more constructively than I did, preferring to immediately setting to work shoveling the “world’s longest driveway” as I slammed around cursing the Trash Nazis for being lazy, for sleeping in, for requiring me to fit two weeks worth of recyclables into one bin approximately the size of my right toe, and something about their mothers.

Then Trav said something that got my attention. He’s not a fan of my cursing habit, so I suspect this may not have been as casual as he made it sound. But I give him props for an extremely well-timed redirection of focus.

“You know, I’ve never made a snowman.”

I blinked at him. “oh, it is ON.”

TRAV’S FIRST SNOWMAN

Step 1: Make a snowball. Then make it bigger. Once it gets about a foot wide, quit trying to pack snow on. Just start rolling the sucker across the yard. Make three in proportionally smaller sizes.

Note to lazy people like me: This usually takes a lot less time if you USE GLOVES, DUMBASS.

Steps 2 & 3: Stack your balls. Then give them a good all over rubbing to make sure they’re good and round. What?

Step 4: Decorate. As everyone knows, snowmen are usually embelleshed with coal for eyes and mouth, a carrot for the nose, a pipe for, well, a PIPE and sticks for arms. But if you’re like us and have absolutely no reason whatsoever to have coal bits, or carrots for that matter, in your house, I recommend rummaging your pantry and tool chest for whatever’s handy.

Case in point, we decked out our snowman with hats I never wear, a couple of Trav’s screwdrivers (for arms) and last year’s Halloween Candy.

Meet CandyFace

He has a fondness for Twix-rolled cigars. A nasty habit that’s given him a fierce case of M&Mgivitus.

He had a brief career as the Olympic Hockey Team Mascot.

But then he moved to France, where he became a cold-hearted Icehole to everyone who knew him. After a few years in therapy, CandyFace realized that his deep-seated anger stemmed from life-long issues with his identity.

He then flew to China and had a sex change.