Ice, Ice Baby a Pain in the Keister

No, I'm not talking about that highly unfortunate Vanilla Ice hit from the 1980s.

I'm talking about the winter of 2012 in Vermont.

Pedestrians gingerly walk on an icy street
in Burlington, Vermont on Monday.

We here in the Green Mountain state have been beset by roller coaster weather involving freezing rain, followed by thaws, followed by subzero cold, with the cycle repeating itself over and over again.

The result is lots of ice underfoot. Which means lots of us end up slipping and falling like a dead tree toppling in a hurricane.

 I like to walk at a very brisk pace. Why wait forever to get where you're going when you can move right along? But with all this ice, we all have to walk gingerly with little baby steps or risk falling.

We've all been falling anyway. First thing this morning, our dog Jackson was dying to get outside to do his business. As soon as the door opened he ran, hit the ice, fell on his side and slid, spiralling down the driveway until he hit a snowbank that had frozen rock solid.

Maybe the dog pee that was twirling out during this accident melted some of the ice, so that's a good thing. The better news is Jackson is none the worse for wear.

Jeff made it out to his SUV just fine, despite the ice rink driveway. The problem came when he arrived at work. He fell on the ice, and he's got an unhappy gimp going now.

I've slipped twice today so far. A branch fell across the end of the driveway during a howling wind storm last night. I went to remove it, and started going now. Luckily, the tree from which the branch came from broke my fall.

Too bad the branch I picked up was too small to act as a walking stick, but no matter.

I got to the parking lot for work, stepped out of my truck and fell again on the ice. I was fine, although I now have a nice, fashionable, powderly white streak on my side from where I slid against the truck as I fell, taking a layer of road salt off it in the proceess.

The temperature has been falling all day, heading toward the minus numbers tonight. Salt isn't going to work. Maybe I should just hire Olympic skater Johnny Weir to teach me some triple axles or something, so that I can at least walk down my super slick driveway creatively.

As long as I don't have to dress like Johnny while I do this.