Too Late

I had a call into Donnie Martin, who is our AC guy, because my heating guy, Dennis (who is very good), said that I should give him a call, because the air-handler was frozen up. I want to use Dennis for both the AC and heat. At any rate, Donnie was a no-show, and I had waited around until 6 o'clock, and it was too late to go home, snowing and dark. Went over to Kroger, got some sushi, whiskey, and a protein drink for in the morning. Back at the museum, read essays on Wyeth and looked at pictures, watched an episode of "Elementary", and called an old friend that another friend had told me was dying. We talked for thirty minutes about how to kill yourself if things got truly unbearable. She has several stage four cancers, and it's a dead heat, what's going to kill her. She asked me what I knew about dying and I couldn't tell her much: fast or slow, painful or not, involving other people or being alone. It's best, I think, if you just disappear, so you can eliminate the cost of internment. The floor cleaning guys have done a great job, but it requires someone stay at the museum, and that's been mostly me, so I got stuck in town for this latest batch of severe weather. Pegi's husband called yesterday and said that neither Pegi or I should attempt to get home. Blowing snow and cold temps. 15 degrees was the high today, zero tonight, and the radio says that the back roads have not been treated. Four inches of new snow in town (sure to be six inches on the ridge) and as they don't plow the cross streets, at these temps, it's been crushed into a sheet of ice. I have to wear my crampons, to walk over to Kroger for whiskey and dinner, Buffalo Wings and potato wedges, and several people asked me where I'd gotten those damned things. Slipping on the ice is one of my least favorite things. If I get home tomorrow, which is certainly my plan, it will be because I wanted to get home, and I was willing to forgo certain creature comforts in order to get there. Nothing completely satisfies, but I'm already ahead of yesterday, and tomorrow is more or less a myth.