jumpingfish

It’s cold outside today, as cold in Central Texas for the weather curmudgeon as it is in northern Ohio where he imagines his son might be trudging across campus soon. (Although the weather curmudgeon privately acknowledges that he hasn’t the faintest idea about his son’s schedule.)

The weather curmudgeon stands at the patio door surveying his backyard. Here and there, snow lies on the lawn left over from yesterday. The raised garden bed closest to the fence is still covered in white. So is the pile of logs. And a blanket left outside in a chair.

The weather curmudgeon remembers the morning yesterday and the predicted wintery mix. When the snow started falling and the flakes got bigger and bigger. When they fell from the sky in clusters so big that even the weather curmudgeon was amazed. Some were as big as half-dollars and fell to the ground like leaves. Others were picked up by the wind and swirled around. The sky was thick with them.

And when the weather curmudgeon opened the door on that snowy yesterday, the air was full of a crunching/clicking sound of the snowflake clusters hitting the ground. He stood on the patio and gasped aloud.

“Holy cow, ” he said, shouting to his fair and industrious wife who was across the house getting ready for work. “I’ve never ever seen anything like this, Trudy!”

The accumulation never did amount to the four inches the weather men predicted. But with this exclamation coming from the weather curmudgeon (who grew up in northern Illinois ice skating, building snow forts, having snowball fights and trudging across campus in knee-deep snow for an 8am Dynamics class), we know it really must have been something.

The weathermen called for cold weather today with a possibility of snow. On the radio (and certainly on the TV too?), they talked and talked about dropping temperatures and projected lows and the possibility of 4 inches of snow accumulation.

The paper said it, too. In big block letters across the top of the metro section, this morning’s headlines proclaimed the possibility of snow.

Trudy looked up at me as I rolled my eyes.

She knows how I feel about this fetish Central Texas weathermen seem to have with inclement weather — proclaiming in excited tones coming fronts, warning people of the dangers … all in the interest, Trudy knows I feel, of getting eyeballs to drive advertising revenue. But when it snows in Dallas, it usually doesn’t snow in Central Texas, and more often than not, their proclamations pass without a snowflake falling.

So I’m in there this morning at the keyboard, reading email, modifying a program, listening to the garbage truck work its way toward our house, when Trudy shouts from the kitchen.

“It’s snowing! It’s snowing! Come quick, it’s snowing.”

And sure enough, there it is just outside our patio door: big wet flakes falling out of the sky, covering the garden beds and the compost pile. There it is, just like they said: our wintery mix, all 0.25 inches of it.

We did some work in the yard last week between cold spell #1 and cold spell #2 while it was sunny and warm outside. My brother bundled brush. I ran to the hardware store for lumber for another square-foot garden. Trudy prepared the soil, mixing vermiculite into the loamy garden blend sitting in bags in the back.

Building a square-foot garden bed is not exactly rocket science. You cut the lumber. You drill the holes. You drive in the screws in the four corners.

But you see, such insight doesn’t come easy to a man with the kind of hands that used to make my grandmother coo, “Oh Davy, you have such soft hands.” The perils of sitting at a keyboard all day.

So anyway … there we are, Trudy and I, on our knees on the patio, she holding the wood, me drilling and screwing — changing the bit for a small hole to a larger countersunk hole and finally for a socket to drive in the screw. While she was dutifully holding the corner square, I was drilling and changing and drilling and changing and screwing and changing in orderly synchrony.

At one point, Trudy pointed to one of the holes I had just drilled.

“You know, you could just drill all the little holes first so you don’t have to change the bit so often.”

Oh sure. And then what would happen? We’d be done in 10 minutes instead of working on this spirit-lifting project for more than an hour.

Right.

Next time.

We left my brother at the starting line. He gave Trudy his sweatpants, and we agreed that we’d wait at mile 6 on the outside of the curve to take his jacket. It was cold, but it was going to be a nice day, and anyway he runs in snow and ice and 18 degree weather where he comes from. We figured he’s want to get rid of it.

Near mile 6 just north of the river, the route came back into downtown from the south and turned to the west. We found a place on the outside of the curve so we could get a good view of the approaching runners. And we waited.

As we stood there, more spectators arrived, but we were in front and had a perfect view of the turn … perfect except for that photographer who decided he could stand out in the middle of the street because the view we had was just the view he wanted.

A lady walked up behind us. She was holding a toddler and had a 4 year old standing beside her who we there to cheer for her daddy. They couldn’t see. I told them to stand in front of me. No, the woman said, but I insisted and pointed out that I could see just fine over the head of the 4 year old. So even though we weren’t in front anymore, we still had a good view of the turn.

Then another lady walked up behind us. She was evidently there to get a shot of her daughter, who was coming by at any moment. I stepped back to give her some room. As it turned out, her daughter didn’t come by for quite some time and when she did, the lady was too confused by the onrush of runners and the crowd that she not only missed the photograph but also missed her daughter entirely.

And then a man walked up holding one daughter and trying to console another daughter who was having a breakdown beside him because she wouldn’t be able to see her mommy. I stepped back and told them to stand in front of us. The man said no, but I insisted, and the girl felt better when she realized that she was in the front of the crowd.

So now we were obviously not in the front. And I had a 6 foot 6 inch man standing in front of me holding a daughter. Still, I could see the runners coming around the turn if I moved back and forth to see around the tall man holding his younger daughter. And anyway the sky was blue. And the sun was shining. And the crowd was shouting. And Trudy and I were ringing our bells and cheering.

And then I saw Ben coming around the outside of the turn.

“There he is!” I shouted to Trudy.

And an amazing thing happened. The people in front of me looked back and stepped aside to give us a better view.

“There’s my brother!” Trudy and I shouted his name as loud as we could. “Ben! Ben!!”

He saw us jumping up and down. He had his red jacket in his hands (he was clearly plenty warm), and I held up a hand to catch it as he tossed it.

“Your banana!” I shouted.

The crowd around us was watching as I was cheering and shouting to him from back in the line with a yellow banana in my other hand.

“Your banana! Take your banana!”

He had other things on his mind and continued running without looking back.

“But your banana!!” I shouted in a mock dejected tone. “His banana,” I shouted (now to the crowd). “Ohhh, he didn’t want his banana!”

The crowd laughed. Trudy and I surrendered our space in the crowd to some folks behind us. And we started walking back to the finish line.

I wore a NASA sweatshirt going out to dinner the other night.

I’ve become quite a wimp for cold weather, and the night was nippy, and the sweatshirt was swinging there on a hanger before me as I pondered my stay-warm options — a plain grey pull-over sweatshirt with a NASA meatball emblazoned on the front:

Geeky perhaps, but I grabbed it from the hanger, because it was there and because it was cold outside and because, I suppose, I wanted to make a statement.

So I pulled the sweatshirt over my head and put on my coat, leaving it unbuttoned. And I went to dinner with that not-so-subtle statement blazoned to my chest for all to see.

I doubt anyone got it. If they noticed anything, it was probably just that geeky guy at the table over there with the big NASA meatball splayed all over his frontside.