Drive by Weight Gain and Too Much Damn Snow

This may be the longest winter of my life. Of course, there were many I can remember as a child in New England, and possibly many more frigid and inconvenient ones I experienced in New York City, but this winter has gone on since late October. Way too long ... can you imagine.

The snow doesn't seem to have any interest in melting away. At least four feet of it still remain in ice drifts that cover lawns, and gardens. All I think about is warmth, and wearing less clothes, and then I think I ought to get in shape. I do belong to the YMCA (14 miles—more than a half hour due to rush hour traffic). I like my workout program and like the little key deal that records my exercises and how much closer I am to the NYC Marathon finish at 72nd St. in Central Park, just a few blocks away from my former home.

To get to the Y, I must arise earlier than 7:30 a.m. make my tea, tidy the house, do the dishes, start a load of laundry, walk and feed the dogs and leave before 8 a.m. This so that I can get to the office at least by 9:30 a.m. which seems reasonable. This, however, is also before my daughter Piper, 17, leaves for school.

Once I was 'All-Over Children, as my grandmother used to say. Now if I see my youngest it's generally for less than an hour a day, morning and night included. She is a social animal, works after school, has a boyfriend, a 4.0 average, homework and lots of pals. So in the morning I stay home, oil myself up with heated Ayuervedic oil, stretch, do sit-ups, lunges, pliés and all the above instead of diving into the rush hour traffic where lately people have been trying to run me off the road.

The funny thing is that when I tell people this they automatically assume I drive slow and it pisses others off. Au contraire. I drive fast, and well. I know how to get ahead and treat the highway like a chess board. But lately it's when I've been really steady, observing the speed limit, staying in the right lane, putting on my blinker and moving into open spaces when merging that people have begun to rage. Even though I really believed this before--now I am certain—not only would people willingly kill someone inside another car, they will do it with malicious intent, stupidly.