To the Neighbor Man who may have thought I was giving you the finger this morning?  I was not.

As you know, it’s been a HIGH of 6ᵒF here for the past MILLION days.  (Ok, maybe not a MILLION.  In reality, it’s only been a week or so.  Either way, I’m now TOTALLY over Winter.  Screw you, Winter!  AND the horse you rode in on.  ‘Cept it’s not even Winter yet.  In which case, don’t even ride IN on yer horse, Winter, cuz yer not wanted ‘round these parts.)

As additional backstory – you need to understand that Sonny had eartube surgery a few days ago.  And has a couple of wide open holes in his head.  AND?  He was on dog walking duty this morning with the temperature reading a cheery -2ᵒF.  (Don’t miss that little symbol before the two.  It’s a MINUS sign.  I’m no good at math, but I do know that much.  And that ‘F’ AFTER the two?  That stands for EFFING minus sign.) 

So, being the good mother I am (Oh?  You have something to say about my ‘good mother’ comment??  Well you can just zip it.  ZIP.  IT!  ‘Cause it’s not about you.  It’s about me.  So, back to me…) I offered to walk the dog instead of having Sonny walk the dog and risk getting that effing minus sign into the holes in his head.

And what started out as a nice little walk with the dog became a clusterbomb of massive proportions.  I won’t go into too much detail here, other than to say my brilliant idea of bringing a hot cup of coffee with me wasn’t so brilliant.  Talk about a hole-in-the-head plan.  The coffee ended up not being that hot about ONE minute into the walk.  Not only was it not hot, it became a HUGE pain in the A$$, especially after I had to carry the dog for a bit because he got scared (of the way the sunlight cast half the street in shadow), slipped his collar and bolted the other way – with me running down the street after him, desperately offering rides in cars to good boys who COME!  And sloshing coffee everywhere. 

When I finally set the dog down after the carrying portion of the walk, he did a HUGE (mushy), steaming dump in the snow.  GAACK!!   

And it was right-about that time — as I’m bobbling fogged-up sunglasses, coffee cup, dog leash and steaming poop bag (I mean, seriously, it looked like I had an active locomotive in there!) — that I realize the fingers of my right-hand-that-had-cold-coffee-sloshed-all-over-it-during-the-chasing-portion-of-the-walk are freezing.  In-imminent-danger-of-frostbite FREEZING!  (Effing minus sign.  Effing coffee cup idea.)

So, for the rest of the walk, it became a game of pulling my freezing fingers one-at-a-time into the dry warmth of the palm-area of the glove:  Now-warm Pointer Finger gets sent back out into the cold and Freezing Middle Finger takes its place.  Just as it was Middle Finger’s turn in the warm hidey-hole, Neighbor Man drove by.  And honked. 

The way the glove’s fingerless middle finger was threaded through the handle of the now-mostly empty coffee cup (effing coffee cup idea) made it extra sticky-uppy.  So when I raised my hand to acknowledge the honk — instead of looking like a friendly wave, it looked like a demented toast-to-your-health/eff-you sort of move.

Well…Cheers!!   Stay warm!