Who could imagine that 2011 would begin with an avalanche?

While I wipe down a spilled beer from the bar a friend asks, hey, does that Bronco have a plow?

Yup, I answer.

What size?

Shrugging, I stretch out my arms and say, maybe this wide…bout this tall. Goes forward.

Where is it? he asked.

I smile. I dry the bar. Well, it's at home, under two-and-a-half feet of snow…

C'mon! You could make so much money with that plow! More than here.

I told him, yeah, but there's beer here. And booze. And it's dry and warm. But no dogs….

A few minutes later I am out in the nearly zero-degree night crouched beside his golden retriever. Scratching and praising him, the dog sops it up, snarling the happy snarl with his golden lips ruffled, hid ribs leaning hard against my legs.

Thursday night I realized my mood had curdled and hardened into a lump. Everyone was annoying. Everything was intolerable. I poured, I chilled, I strained, I popped bottle caps. I wanted everyone to leave. Go home, go away, leave me here to clean up without you saying, did you finish the drawer yet? You stocked?

Screw off, I kept thinking. May an open door suck you into the parking lot, and may frigid wind blow across your ass. Thank you.

The next night I am saying sorry for my mood yesterday. Sort of joyless and boring. Sorry.

What was it?

Stuff on my mind, I say. It grows ugly with time until I can't look anymore.

To my friend in Pa. who apologizes for dusting off and stretching out a great stress reliever, I wrote: Hey, the F Bomb is satisfying every time. So are the looks on well-dressed faces. Don't smear your lipstick over it ladies! Then again, I don't think she wants her youngest to use the word properly in a sentence in kindergarten.

To another blog-acquaintance with young children I said: I read your story and Erin's and I think, I have no kids. Why is my life hard? I guess "hard" is just a consequence of things we want to make better, that refuse to play along. Damn bricks, really.

Problems are these immobile bricks I can't dislodge.

Jerry dissolved one in the minus-zero darkness at 6:45 this morning: as the dogs bark like mad, Jerry sat up in bed and said, the furnace just quit.

What? Why are the dogs barking?

The chugging noise from the furnace, he answered.

How?

Since I had come to bed after 5 am, I was soon asleep again. He had gone outside to dig out the oil tank and find the problem. Maybe the fuel gelled or the lines froze. Downstairs today near the furnace were his tools and contraption for work -- his magic wands that create hot and cold where you need them, large or small. Our furnace is now firing like it should.

We bought a static training collar for Lily today. It's meant to help me prevent a future of stitches in the vet's office, but I suspect I'll be using it to keep myself awake.