Winter In Utah

"I have to go. Alyssa just hit a deer," my husband announced to me this morning.

"Is she okay?"

"Yeah. Emily's dad came along just after she hit it and helped lift the car off the carcass," he added.

"I don't know what to do with that information."

This is winter in Utah this year. It's colder than the current temperatures in Alaska. The air quality is dangerous to breathe. Surrounded by mountains which is breathtaking when you can see them, cold air is trapped in the pocket called the valley and warm air floats happily above us while cold, smoggy air pollutes everything else. Visibility is dismal in the morning. This kind of winter happens about every 7 or 8 years.

It. Is. Miserable.

Back to the cold. It snowed on Christmas day. We've not reached a high of freezing since. In fact, anything above the teens is a heat wave. I haven't seen the street in front of my house for nearly a month.

Evidenced by a photo I took yesterday:

Hi, Joan! I can kind of see your house! I'm waving at you! But you can't see me, can you.

And here is our little miracle asphalt. I wore black pants so it's hard to determine the size but it is a little bigger than my size 6.5 shoe. 

That's just sad.

Lethargy and Seasonal Affective Disorder is running rampant in these parts. Last week I ran out of brown bread. I cried through my shower. Then a half an hour past my shower.

In the summer time when I reread this post I will puzzle at my previous statements but right now I completely comprehend crying over running out of brown bread. It means that I've lost my mental capacity to keep a running tally in my head of household items. I don't do Franklin Planners. I don't do smart phones. I make lists before I go to the store so I stay focused but I generally know where I stand in terms of toilet paper, paper towels, milk, sour cream, Diet Coke, and brown bread, among other necessary staples of the household. 

Ironically, I was told that we were out of paper towels on Saturday so I went to the store and bought a mega package of paper towels. When I pulled into the garage after my store run, my eyes wandered to the top of the storage freezer. There was a super mega package of paper towels. How did I not know that? I know these things. I remember these things. But not in this winter funk. The air is heavy and fuzzy and so are our brains and moods. I can't wait to get outside and dig up worms with my chickens. Play in the dirt. Pull those dreaded weeds. 

Trying to be optimistic, I will proudly tell you that my daughter actually performed an act of mercy this morning. The real story of the deer is that she saw something in the road and thought it was a block of ice. She decided she shouldn't hit such a large block of ice and slowed to a stop. But not quite in time. She stopped on the deer which was mostly dead already. Someone else had already hit the beast. She just finished it off. And I can't help but be very, very grateful that her best friend's dad just happened to drive on that same road at that moment.

She's okay. The car is mostly okay. Suffice to say, it needs a car wash. Badly. But we can't wash it because ice will form after the wash and then you can't open the doors.

Funk.