Oz . . .

Katie and I came back from dinner last night on a wing and a prayer. The mysterious disease plaguing my poor little Miata hit with full strength as we pulled out of Denny's parking lot. Coughing and bucking, shaking and sputtering, it wheezed home on 1.5 cylinders threatening at each intersection to roll over and die midstream. Twice it has been in the shop and twice we are answer-less. She only misbehaves around me. For Paul, she is a perfect angel. But this time, I fear she has sustained permanent internal damage as Katie kept asking what that horrid burning smell was and looking at me suspiciously. Sweet child. Monday morning, I will try and resurrect the dead and get her into the shop. Hopefully she is sick enough this time to stop playing possum and let Paul fix her. $igh.

So this morning, the obvious choice for grocery shopping was Katie's CR-V. Now I understand there are people out there in blizzard conditions and temperatures as far below zero as we are above but dammit, I live in the south . . land of sweet oranges, date palm trees, key lime pie and armadillos . . . I do not . . . repeat . . . do not live in the frozen tundra. So, why when I turn on the ignition and the windshield wipers, do I hear an eerily familiar sound from far back in the recesses of my mind . . . thirty five years back to be exact. It took me a minute to grasp what I was hearing. My eyes shot from the dashboard to the windshield and there it was . . ice. ICE! Frozen wetness on the windshield . . . the wipers trying their valiant southern best to beat back the northern foe. We lost one war, we shall not lose another. I look around and there is frost on roofs, skims of ice on the edge of puddles. Surely we are in Oz.