Have I Told You Lately...

That Ronald darling is a prince among men? No? Really? Huh. Go figure.

Okay, perhaps that is a bit over the top; but he is really great.* We have been having a very cold winter, you may have noticed. It is exactly the kind of winter I expected we'd be having back when I was in grade school. The teachers were very clear; we should expect cold winters as adults. The reason, of course, was the advancing glaciers, the ice age that was coming. So, we've had a cold and precipitous winter. Our car sits on a concrete slab next to our home, not garaged and not even car-ported. The snow and sleet and ice all hit it, while it just sits there shivering and cowering. And every morning, Ronald darling goes out and warms up the car before I leave for work. See, I told you he was a nice guy!*

This morning, it was worse... about 8 steady hours of sleet and freezing rain landed on our car during the night. I woke up during the night, about 12:30 or 1:00 and it sounded like a summer rain storm. We have a metal roof, so the sound reverberates in the house. It was pouring down freezing rain and/or sleet, just like a summer gully washer.

This morning, the car was encapsulated. Ronald darling asked when I planned on leaving. Forty five minutes prior to that time, he went out to salt the walks, scrape the car windows, and warm up the engine and interior. When he had every thing cleared off, he got in the car and drove it out to the highway to make sure that the streets in the complex and the roads to the highway were passable. And it took him all of that time, three quarters of an hour to make it possible for me to leave safely. Scraping and shovelling and all. See?*

And then I got the lecture. "Be careful, watch out, check your brakes, don't follow to close, watch out for the other guy, don't go too fast, keep an assured clear distance. And be careful!"**





*Don't tell him I said so!
**But, he's still terrific!*