Oh the weather outside is frightful

Every so often I’ve mentioned my former wife here, mostly in terms of her effect on my life or my current emotional state. She really is one of the best things to ever happen to me. But bless her soul, she had the homemaking skills of Paris Hilton. Here’s one of my all-time favorite stories…

At one point during college we lived in a tiny apartment that was essentially carved out of a hallway in a New England farmhouse. As such, the front door opened directly into our kitchen.

My love did most of the cooking, and usually did passably well, but she was just learning, and there were occasional accidents. When something got a little bit smokey or reduced to a sticky goo, she’d take the offending pan outside and leave it by the door until it had cooled down and stunk less.

Now this was up in northern Maine, where snow happens eight months of the year. So usually it got dropped on a snowbank. And often it would be actively snowing during one of these culinary misadventures. The snow that piled up on the pan kinda made the mess a little worse, but only if you went out and got the pans afterward. If you didn’t…

Yeah. If you didn’t get them, then by morning the snow would have piled up and hid the entire offensive mess from view under a pristine layer of pretty white fluff. And my wife quickly realized that if that happened, no one noticed, and she didn’t have to deal with the mess at all!

Of course, as winter dragged on, the little woman’s culinary repertoire would be increasingly limited by the dwindling stock of available cookware. When the spring thaw finally came, we celebrated Easter by finding six to ten rusted skillets, pans, and pots strewn all over the front lawn. And then we could eat anything we wanted for four whole months, until October’s first snows, when the cycle of the seasons began again…