ICE DAM HELL

Unless you have been living under a rock this past winter – and in hindsight that actually might have been the smart thing to do – you know that Boston and her suburbs endured an epic amount of snowfall and historically cold temperatures. The news stations reported daily on roof collapses, the dismal state of the broken down “T”, and the record-breaking cold. Every conversation began with a discussion of the daily inconvenience of living with so much snow. How much snow are we talking? Well, this season 110.6 inches of snow fell, the most in Boston’s history. For Boston city dwellers it was a nightmare of cancelled public transportation and buried cars. Out in the suburbs, we had our own special kind of hell. While you lived your happy, little carefree life filled with unicorns and rainbows under that rock, we out here in the Boston suburbs had sunk silently into the miasma known as… Ice Dam Hell.

If you have never experienced an ice dam in your house, consider yourself very lucky. An ice dam results when ice and snow build up on your roof and, instead of staying frozen, melts due to heat rising from inside the house and then refreezes just enough to stop (thus the dam part) all the other ice and snow just on top of it, now also melted, from going anywhere but up under your shingles and down into your living room. Or kitchen. Or bedroom. Or all three.

After the initial shock of disbelief (Is… that… water??!!) you grab anything you can to contain the water now pouring from your ceiling, windows, archways and down your walls. Buckets, bowls, towels, anything will work, just as long as it can be either 1) emptied and replaced under the dripping water, or 2) added to the ever growing pile of towels on the laundry room floor. After that, you call your roof guy, assuming you have one. I called Chris, my go-to gutter man. Sure, he would come over. But he was booked, so, how about the Thursday after next? Fighting back tears and a scream (drip, drip, drip), I agreed.

After that first week I figured I had better get started trying to clear out the dams myself so I grabbed my roof rake (What? You don’t have a roof rake? Sheesh. Rookie.) and climbed a ladder and started to pull down the 5 feet of snow on the one roof I could reach from the ground. What I discovered was that under all the snow lay foot-thick ice. Thick, compact, blue ice. Needless to say I didn’t make much progress.

Let me tell you what I learned about foot-thick ice on your roof and ice dams. For starters, sock monkeys filled with calcium chloride DO NOT WORK. Oh, yes, I know – it was all over the Internet. Just fill up your pantyhose (pantyhose? Who the heck wears pantyhose?) with calcium chloride, and lay them over your ice dams until they melt. Suuure. It’s akin to trying to empty a swimming pool with a plastic spoon. Yah, maybe you will get all the water out of the pool that way… by the year 2150. I’ll tell you what does work. Chinese water torture. Holy Jumping Jesus, that drip! drip! drip! will drive you nuts! It will make you think you hear water dripping everywhere. It will make you think that, no matter where you step, it will be in water. Crazy doesn’t even begin to tell the story.

By the time Chris showed up with his guy my family room ceiling looked like an upside down sepia-toned map of the Rio Grande. The kitchen ceiling had disgorged huge chunks of plaster into my sink, and for some reason my stove’s overhead fan was leaking too (that got me out of cooking dinner for a few nights, so at least I came out ahead on that one). Chris and his guy got to work shoveling snow and hammering away, but they also made little progress. And still the dams grew and grew until water was pouring down in almost every room in my house, save a few. Every roofer I called was booked for weeks. In desperation I called our insurance agent and explained what was happening. He said he would send a crew over as soon as they arrived… from Minnesota! This was some serious shit. And all I had to do was wait.

So, I sat in my house and listened to water dripping. Luckily, I did have my one guy, Chris. He and his “crew” of one came over four times. Each time he would spend the day and clear a little bit of roof, climb down and say, “Well, I hope I don’t see YOU again.” I started to take it personally. Hopefully he was just trying to be optimistic. He really didn’t mind seeing me due to the fact that he charged me $800 each time he came. I just think he was hoping he would see me, say, next fall, when I needed my gutters cleaned and not the following day, with another roof emergency. But it wasn’t enough and Chris and his man could not keep up with the snow or break up the ice. Drip, drip, drip.

During this time my contact with the outside world was limited. For one, I could barely see the outside the world due to the 10 foot high mounds of snow blocking my first floor windows. In addition, it’s really hard to leave the house when you have to empty those aforementioned buckets and bowls as you never know when they might reach CAPACITY and OVERFLOW and then you are not only dealing with ICE DAMS but a FLOOD. Starting to sound biblical? Do you see the darkness yet? Because, ladies and gentleman, I can assure you that in Ice Dam Hell things get dark. Fast.

So. Let’s talk about this “life inside the house,” shall we?

As far as hygiene went, expectations were low. The morning came fast and first thing I did was run downstairs and empty the buckets. Frankly, I did not have time for the niceties of hygiene. No teeth brushing. No showers. Oh, okay, go ahead, judge away. But you weren’t the guy who had to come home to me at the end of a hard day’s work. Lucky for me, my husband is the kinda guy who notices, well, nothing. I could be swinging naked from the foyer chandelier with baby koalas hanging from my shoulders and all he would care about is whether I shouted “HELLO, HONEY!” when he walked in the door. Lucky for me he also has a terrible sense of smell.

After bucket duty and coffee, I reheated frozen gluten-free pancakes that I had made the week before. They were fine, okay? Fine! I like reheated food! Who cares that I had to chisel them apart every morning? I added plenty of hot maple syrup and butter and declared them good. There are plenty of people who have less, who expect less. They expect cold cereal. I expected hot fucking pancakes if I was going to put up with drip, drip, drip for the rest of the day.

The true low point came one morning, about mid-way through February. I had planned to go to Florida and I had a round-trip plane ticket booked and paid for. On the morning of my flight I realized that I couldn’t possibly go and leave behind a dripping house. I had to cancel the trip! My escape from Ice Dam Hell was foiled. And to add insult to injury, I knew that I would be charged a $150 cancellation fee. So what did I do? I called JetBlue and pulled a “Sheree.” My sister Sheree is the Queen of Getting Out of Shit. How? She cries. Speeding and pulled over? Tears. Late on some payments? Copious tears. So I pulled a “Sheree” and cried to the Jetblue lady that I lived in BOSTON and that it was AWFUL and that I REALLY WANTED TO GO TO FLORIDA BUT HAD TO EMPTY BUCKETS OF WATER! And it worked! No cancellation fee. I had learned from a pro.

A few times that month I got a knock on my door and various strange, toothless men would be standing there. They would hand me business cards stating they were in the “masonry” business or landscaping, and ask, would I perhaps be needing their roof-clearing services? all the while smiling at me like a character from a Dickens novel, “heh heh, tip o’ the hat to ya, ma’am.” I could just imagine that they had driven by, espied my house covered in Deathsicles™ (I coined that term – trademark pending), and felt sorry for me. I backed away, shut the door and locked it, and then threw away their cards deep in the garbage, so far that down that my husband couldn’t dig them out and shake them in my face and ask, “Why didn’t you have these guys do the work?” Simple. Apart from the lack of dental care and insurance, I knew that when some guy has to knock on your door to look for work during the worst winter and biggest snowfall in Boston’s history, which in turn created the biggest need for manual labor in Boston since the Tea Party, then the red flag popping up wildly in front of your eyes needs heeding. Do not hire them!

After several weeks of this and prior to the Minnesotans showing up I was finally able to convince a tree company to bring their bucket truck over to clear my roof. Little did they know I was bordering on insanity. I was so desperate to have them stay I brought them fresh brewed coffee for their first coffee break. That wasn’t enough. I needed them to stay ALL DAY. I was sure they were going to leave at lunch, so I baked them homemade blueberry muffins and brought them out while they were still hot! I bribed them with a warm foyer to rest their weary bodies! I laughed with them and pretended that we were friends and that we had friends in common! HAHA! Bob? Sure I know Bob, that old coot! I joked around with them, anything to get them to stay! They did stay and cleared almost the entire roof of snow, God bless.

Then, like magic, the Minnesotans showed up with their ice dam steaming machines. By then I resembled Jack Nicholson from “The Shining.” I greeted them dressed in striped pajama pants, a fleece-lined flannel shirt, and a wild print ski hat. My hair was dirty and straggly, and I hadn’t brushed my teeth or washed my face in weeks. I figured I’d get out of their way and make myself useful so I grabbed a shovel in one hand and the roof rake in the other and headed to the end of the driveway to shovel the mailbox out (step, draag, step, draag). And as I stood at the end of my driveway I realized that I had in all likelihood seen the worst of what was in store for me that winter.

I took my time shoveling. When a car would drive by, I would stand back and watch them pass. I made slow but steady progress, and when I was done I felt good that I had cleared a path for the mailman. And while it took them all day, the Minnesotans removed every bit of ice and cleared all the dams. Sure, the snow banks were still 15 feet high and my house was in ruins, but the dripping had, finally, stopped.

Once they left I took a nice, long hot shower, brushed my teeth and put on some make-up. I surveyed the damage around me – ripped open ceilings and walls, buckled floors, stained ceilings. I knew that the next few months would bring estimates, then renovation and repair.

So I did the only thing I could think of doing that made sense. I logged onto my computer and clicked on the Jetblue link and I rebooked that ticket to Florida.

One-way.

DRYNUARY: The Low-Down on Being Sober for 31 Days in the Dead of Winter

The month of January and the post-holiday period are a bitch-slap back to reality. The parties are over, the decorations have come down, the presents have been put away or returned, and the grim reality, at least in the Northern and Eastern parts of the U.S., is that it is depressingly dark almost all of the time and winter has technically just begun. Unless you embrace the snow and cold and spend your life outdoors no matter what Mother Nature throws at you, winter sucks. And the one way to make it completely and totally unbearable is to stop drinking.

Yes, folks, Drynuary. The entire month without a drink. While it has a bit more traction in the U.K., it has its adherents stateside and I decided I would be one of those brave (stupid?) souls who would forgo the entire 31 days of January without a single drop of alcohol (they couldn’t have picked February?). And if you know me, you know that momma likes her some eggnog. But with the holidays behind me, the eggnog in the trash and the rum locked away, I knew that it was time for Drynuary.

Many studies have been done about the consumption of alcohol, and in particular, women and their drinking habits and its effects. When asked by our physicians how much we consume on a weekly basis, we lie. I think our doctors know we lie. We lie to our friends, and we lie to ourselves. I mean, what 50ish suburban mother of three is going to own up to downing tequila shots while standing on top of a bar during her recent trip to Atlantis? (Wait. What?) Not me, and not my friends. We all say, “Oh, I don’t know, um, maybe four glasses of wine over the entire weekend?” Yeah, right. Maybe four drinks in the first hour of a Thursday Girls’ Night Out, but the whole weekend? Ha!

I was very hopeful that this was going to be a major, life-changing experiment and in anticipation I made a list of expectations. Wild expectations. A month without booze? I was going to drop 20 pounds! My face would become wrinkle-free and be clear and glowing! I would write a brilliant novel! I would crush all comers on Trivia Crack! My left eye has been twitching non-stop since last April and I figured that, too, would stop and, bonus! my liver would be so happy! It would be like a Master Cleanse without the cayenne. The reality was not even close to my expectations. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s talk about the actual process.

Alcohol supplies us with, in addition to a buzz, sugar. Lots and lots of sugar. So, what do you think I ate the entire month? Good guess. Hot chocolate with FLUFFERNUTTER on top, for Pete’s sake! EVERY DAY. Kettle Corn Popcorn with extra butter and salt! Snickers bars! Dark chocolate bars! Milk chocolate bars and I don’t even like milk chocolate! Maple sugar candy! You name it, if it was sweet, I ate it. I’m sure you are wondering whether I could possibly think I would lose any weight substituting candy for booze, but, oddly enough, I did. About 2 pounds. Although I’m positive it was water weight my body did change – my legs, butt and hips slimmed down. I attribute that to the fact that I lost the bloat that alcohol produces. And I had a month free of those post-hangover food binges. Yeah, you so know what I’m talking about. Why do you think pizza and French fries were even invented?

In addition to sugar and a buzz, alcohol supplies us with a social life. Yes, you can have a social life sober. But it is way more fun to have a social life with a drink in your hand. So, I pretty much cleared my calendar. My husband and I had one dinner on the books right in the beginning of the month (I got through it with cranberry juice and sparkling water but my sober (read: critical) self did notice how DRUNK everyone else got – tee-hee), but for the rest of the month I turned down all invitations and stayed in.

Here is what happens: time sloooows down. Days just seem to take forever without being able to look forward to a nice glass of cabernet with dinner at the end. Seriously, there are like 35 hours in a day when you’re sober. So besides eating all that candy, I had to fill all that free time during my evenings and nights. I was especially careful to be doing something at cocktail hour. For the first two weeks, it was a struggle. I would distract myself with food and cooking (Bolognese sauce, mac and cheese, gluten-free brownies, roasted chickens with rosemary and lemon!), or shopping on the internet. I need a little shed out back for all the crap I bought online. Towards the end of the month I did not need that distraction as much. I spent more time reading, writing and just relaxing. Not drinking mattered less and less. Or maybe I just knew that the month was coming to an end, and soon, oh so soon, I would be sipping that lush La Forge Estate 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon winking at me from the corner of my wine rack.

The only thing during my month long hiatus that truly bothered me was that every so often I fantasized about that first drink in February. Yup, that first drink would loom large in my imagination like a muscular lover, hot and ready for action. Action with ME. I envisioned a blazing fire in Vermont, a big glass of hearty red, and moi. I guess if anything about going dry made me think about my relationship with alcohol, it was this. Why the fantasy? I was romanticizing drinking. I thought, maybe my relationship with alcohol has a ritualistic quality because I enjoy the scenes of the crime – like a roaring fire and red wine, or a martini before dinner at a five-star restaurant, or a beer on the beach, or a margarita with my girlfriends. For me, drinking alone has no appeal. It was the social scene that I thought of when I was not drinking, the social scene I was actively avoiding. Right?

I rationalized that denial does that to you. I’m fairly certain that it wouldn’t matter what it was; anything denied is going to take over the imagination and become hyper-sensitized. If I gave up, say, peanut butter, I would probably be dreaming of diving into a vat of Skippy, and slathering it all over my body (just sayin’). Maybe it was that way with booze? I knew it would not be forever so I allowed my mind to indulge. I suppose that if I had decided to never drink again I could flip a little switch in my brain and it would no longer factor into my thoughts. I would conjure up different scenes that didn’t feature alcohol. Why care or even think about something you are not going to experience ever again? But since I knew it was just a month, then a few weeks, then a few days, away, I thought about it. A lot.

Or maybe I was just a raging alcohol in complete denial?

Nah.

So, how did it turn out? Well, at month’s end I took stock and I noticed that, yes, my skin was a little clearer, although the wrinkles were still there. And that eye twitch? Still happening. On the upside, my body was not as bloated and I felt stronger. My mind was sharper and I had been sleeping better. I definitely would wake up feeling more refreshed and well rested. Frankly, I just felt physically better with more energy. And I felt emotionally better, too. Happier. I laughed more easily last month and I was calmer, too. I felt like I was handling situations (life, no matter what the month, has its challenges), with greater aplomb and grace. I dealt with whatever came my way and then moved on. I’m not saying I don’t typically handle life well. It’s just that I noticed I handled life, well, better. I was a better me. I was a boring better me, but, well, heck, you can’t have everything.

With the advantage of hindsight I have to admit it was fairly easy to take time out from imbibing. Knowing I was doing something positive for my body and mind with very little effort was, and is, encouraging. Could I do it again? Absolutely. Would I do it again? Yes. But it’s going to have to wait until next year.

Until then, just hand me that corkscrew.

BEETS: A Modern Fable

Once there was a young man who hated beets.  It was the only food he hated, but he really really hated them.  He met a woman, they fell in love and got married.  It just so happens that this woman was a wonderful cook.  She loved to cook.  She also loved beets.  The first time she served them early in their marriage, the man politely told her that he hated beets, and asked that she never serve them again. She said, “But I love beets! They’re delicious and healthy!  I don’t understand why you don’t like them!  Try them and maybe over time you will love them too.”  He smiled and said, “No, I really do not like them and do not want to eat them. So please, don’t serve them again… okay?”  Hmmm, she thought, I love beets! I do not get why he doesn’t love them too!  “Okay,” she said, “I won’t serve them again.”

A few months later they were having a dinner party and the woman made a wonderful dinner for their guests.  She made a wonderful tenderloin of beef and a delicious potato a gratin. For the vegetable she served beets.  The man couldn’t believe his eyes. He pulled her aside in the kitchen.  “I told you I hate beets!  Why did you make them?”  “What?” the woman said, “You don’t like beets?”  He glared at her.  “You know I don’t like beets.”  “I’m sorry, I totally forgot you don’t like beets.  Jeez!  It wasn’t intentional – I just forgot!  Besides, I love beets and they are sooo good for you!  Why don’t you just try them!” “I HATE BEETS,” he said.  “I do not want to try them, and I already told you that!”  “Well, I’m sorry.  I won’t do it again.”  Secretly, she thought that he was a little nuts not to love beets and that he was making a big deal over nothing – all he had to do was not eat them!  Besides, she liked them so she just couldn’t understand why he didn’t and why he was making such a fuss.

A year later as they sat down to dinner, the wife put a plate of food in front of her husband.  On the plate were beets.  “What are those?” he asked her.  “Beets,” she said.  He looked at her.  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said.  “Why would I be kidding you?” she said.  He looked her in the eye and said, “You know I don’t like beets and you intentionally made beets.  Why?  Are you trying to upset me?”  She looked confused.  “You don’t like beets?” she asked.  “You KNOW I don’t like beets!  How many times have I told you that I HATE BEETS!  You have no consideration for me!  I have asked you for ONE THING!  Not to serve BEETS!” he shouted as he got up from the table and stormed out.  The wife was speechless.  “I forgot!  I’m sorry!” she apologized. She mumbled to herself, “Beets are delicious!”  She followed him down the hall. “Your reaction is totally out of proportion to the fact that I served beets! I just don’t see what the big deal is!” she said.  He turned around angrily. “The BIG DEAL,” he shouted, “is that I have told you numerous times that I hate beets, that I do not want to be served beets, that it is the ONE FOOD I hate, yet you STILL SERVE IT!!  You just don’t care!  You don’t care enough about me to REMEMBER that I don’t like beets and that I don’t want them served to me!!”  The wife was astonished.  She said, “Jeez, I just cannot believe that you don’t like beets so I forgot.  It is just not that a big a deal!! Why are you making such a BIG DEAL about it!  The rest of the food is good and I rarely serve them!  I just forgot, that’s all!!!  Try to remember all the good meals I have made over the years that didn’t have beets!  Why can’t you remember those? Good Lord!”

Many years passed.  Every so often the wife would serve beets and the husband would scream at her and accuse her of intentionally serving beets to him to piss him off.  Every time the wife would complain, “It’s not that big a deal!  You’re crazy!  It doesn’t mean I don’t love you just because I serve you beets!  What about all the other great vegetables I serve and all the good meals I make?  Why don’t those count?  I just do not understand your aversion to beets.  I LOVE beets!” Secretly she thought to herself that he was crazy not to love beets and that he was overreacting.  She just plain got distracted and forgot he hated beets, and it just wasn’t a BIG DEAL.

Over time the husband was nervous about sitting down to dinner.  Every time he sat down he was afraid that beets would be served.  He lost his appetite for his wife’s food.  He stopped trusting his wife.  He figured, if she loved me she would remember I hate beets.  He was always on guard, always afraid beets would be served.  Beets kept being served, so eventually he stopped sitting down for dinner.  His wife starting eating alone, and she felt rejected.

One day, he looked at her and said, “Listen.  Let’s just eat out for awhile.  Let’s see if I can get my appetite back.  I don’t want you cooking for awhile.”  “Okay,” she said. “That sounds like a good plan.”  “But you have to make a promise to me,” he said.  “Anything!” she said. “I want you eating with me again!”  “When we return from our eating-out phase and you start cooking for me, you must promise that you will never, ever make beets.  I know you love them, and I know you think they are delicious and healthy, and I know you think I am crazy that my aversion to beets is so strong, but if you love me, you will honor my request and never make beets again. Okay?”  “Of course!” she cried. “I will never make beets again! I PROMISE.”

The couple ate our for several weeks.  On the first night back home the wife made dinner.  She placed a plate in front of her husband. On the plate was a slice of moist roast chicken, delicious mashed potatoes, his favorite gravy, and beets.  He was stunned.  He just looked at the plate.  Tears formed in his eyes.  He just couldn’t believe it.  “What’s wrong?” his wife asked.  The man said nothing.  He got up from the table, got in his car, and drove off, never to return.