Winter wonderland my ass! or Damn my thin Indian blood

The hammock curves under the weight of an inch of ice frosted with hardened snow. The deck has become a skeetway of 3 inch ice, on top of which Duke and I both flail and skid. The sun umbrella broke at the base, listing atop the garden table like a macabre parasol. The dog steps gingerly through his yard, his playground now a obstacle course of jagged ice, frozen leaves and plunging icicles.

Neither of us love the winter. His excuse is purely physical - not so much playtime in frigid weather. His shearling coat doesn't allow optimal movement, his feet got cold fast. And yes, I have heard about dog shoes, or sled shoes as the huskies of the Iditarod use. However I was a bad dog mother and didn't order a pair in late November this year (which is when winter began) so Duke doesn't have footies to brave the cold streets of Passaic Park.

My dislike of winter could stem from my thin Indian blood. I mean I'm from the south of India, for God's sake, I never even saw ice until I lived in Poona. I remember the incident clearly. My parents filled a bucket with water one night and left it on the front porch. The next morning the bucket was frozen solid, baffling a country chickling like myself. However my cousin Suji, who was born in the same area of India LOVES the cold. Matter of fact she wants her ashes scattered over Everest when she passes. Who, pray tell, will scatter them I wonder?

Complicating matters is the theory that my blood has thinned not due to the deep Telugu blood flowing through it, but due to the vast quantities of vodka I consumed during my school years. Come off it! I was a young girl released from the chains of Christian church school, who wouldn't party it down on a campus as notorious as University of Maryland's? Earning me the rather amusing nickname of ahem, "Chedalavodka".

Either way you slice it. Thin blood. Thin blood.