Let's Gripe about the Weather!

Mother Nature sure knows how to put a crimp in holiday plans. Where Miss Crankypants lives, it’s been North Pole cold for nearly a week. Now all you smug Minnesotans, just can it: we KNOW you live through our kinds of cold in the summertime. We KNOW our snowdrifts are puny compared to yours and we KNOW our wind chill couldn’t keep a Popsicle from melting.
But to us, it’s C-O-L-D. Minus TEN degrees cold.
It’s been so bad that University of Oregon football players have been forced to dump snow on a poor unsuspecting retired art professor. Which led to a guy getting suspended for the bowl game. If we lose that game, we’ll know the COLD SNAP FROM NEPTUNE is responsible in a car-sliding-sideways way.
Other oddities in the City of Eternal Hippies have been a bit tamer. We have a tie-dyed snowman in our yard. Seriously.
Keeping warm is an adventure, too, as are bursting water mains and instant ice skating rinks forming in the street. Right this very minute Miss Cranky is wearing so many layers that her arms are stuck out like a scarecrow. She’s wearing fingerless gloves to type. Every trip to the little girl’s room takes two hours to peel off the clothes and put them back on again. Miss CP is wishing she had those old-fashioned long johns with the trap door in the back.
At this rate all the holiday gifts will consist of home baked goodies which Miss CP will then turn around and eat until she’s sick.
She will then have to get outside and try to find the driveway, shoveling until she keels over or the snow melts, whichever comes first. How does the Jolly Old Elf do it? Miss Crank can’t exactly go out and hitch up the reindeer. Does Santa have to deal with frozen pipes?
Even Cranky Cat, who just HAD to go outside at three in the morning, learned just how cold it is out there. By the time someone let him in, he was shivering and needed hot cocoa with marshmallow tuna treats on top to warm up. We may have to ship that ungrateful cat to Minnesota so he can find out what REAL COLD feels like.