They must have done something to deserve it.
They must have done something to deserve it.
Underinflated footballs, maybe?
We just keep getting bone chilling cold enough to cancel school without enough snow to cancel work for me. Really, we're suffering worse than Boston.
It did put a quick stop to (or at least a quick pause in) a series of shootings.
5: We're in the same (ice-bound) boat here.
I've never touched an Ohioan, so I wouldn't know.
This post will be even funnier when all the low-income people who commute by public transportation have actually lost their jobs and houses, rather than just losing weeks worth of income.
More snow in three weeks than Chicago has ever gotten in an entire winter! Can you imagine how fucked Chicago would be? Those people are pussies about snow.
I like to think I would be harder to troll if Zardoz had been to day care more than seven days this month, but who knows.
A lot of that is overblown, although I am impressed the NYT editors allowed in the part about poor people who were forced out bearing the brunt since commuter services now suck for them and they're the ones who can least afford it. I was expecting something about how much extra was being spent drydocking the yacht you thought you'd be able to keep in the harbor.
14: It's a relatively short month anyway.
Yes. And we can now guarantee that we will pay the full month's day care bill for less than two weeks worth of care. Hoo-fucking-ray.
On the other hand, our newly elected fiscally thrifty blowdried glory of a governor is appointing a commision to figure out what, other than chronic underfunding, could have possibly caused the public transit system to self-immolate, so that should help a bunch.
A lot of that is overblown
Do you think so? At least half of the people at my office use the commuter rail. They've had 2- to 5-hour commutes (one-way) as a matter of course these last few weeks. People coming to meetings at my office end up parking over a mile away.
The woman who commutes to my lab on the commuter rail has either been staying home or sleeping at the lab, as it's solidly four hours each way, if the trains are even running.
We don't even have a commuter rail (that runs near my office).
The commuting stuff is accurate. Hours digging out a car after each storm seems a stretch. 100 roofs (counting carports and garages) have collapsed, oh no! Out of how many hundreds of thousands of structures? Granted, I live on a main road, but it's passable within 12 hours after each storm. It's not like people are stuck in their cars on the highway freezing to death (the standard '78 comparison) or starving in their homes- everyone stocks up on food every time but I can't imagine any situation with modern equipment where people would be unable to shop or the stores would be unstocked for a week. I think maybe one person has died from CO poisoning due to a blocked vent, a dozen others taken to the hospital?
Also, as someone who had a minor medical emergency the night after the first blizzard, let me say fuck you to anyone who thinks that total transportation shutdown isn't a big deal. We hadn't yet spent hours digging out our car and driveway, and there was a travel ban, so no taxis. Guess who's going to be stuck with an ambulance bill? (I needed to go to the hospital right then, but in normal circumstances wouldn't have taken an ambulance. Almost certainly won't qualify for reimbursement.)
Basically the points about economic issues are accurate, especially for lower income people who don't get paid if they don't show up, the public safety stuff is overblown.
Hours digging out a car after each storm seems a stretch.
Why does that seem a stretch exactly?
Hours digging out a car after each storm
Maybe not 3 hours, but 1-2 is possible.
1. Digging out the car itself
2. Digging out the small bit of driveway and the sidewalk it crosses
3. Digging out the many feet high and couple of feet deep wall of heavy-packed road slush that is plowed over the end of our driveway many times a day.
This doesn't count the time digging out more driveway space to get the car out from under scary icicles.
It has taken me at least two hours to get our driveway dug out after each storm. (That's just the driveway; the total shoveling has taken four or five hours each time.) Part of that is that during a snow emergency, the city plows all the snow onto our side of the street, but it would take a long-ass time regardless.
22: Hope you're feeling better. It really doesn't take much for being trapped to turn into a big problem.
Maybe if you have a long driveway that you're shoveling by hand. Digging a car out of a street spot, the common excuse used for space savers (don't get me started on that) is that I spent hoooooouuuuurs digging this spot so I own it. No way it's multiple hours unless you've left it there for all 4 storms. I clear out my driveway with 2 cars, plus the neighbor's, in 1-2 hours. That's with a snowblower, although that includes a lot of manual shoveling because the blower can do close around the cars, the steps, or the thick stuff the plows leave.
That's with a snowblower
C'mon, dude.
Last storm, minus the neighbor's driveway, was about the same without the snowblower, the auger belt got stripped.
I agree that space savers are horrible and it's loathsome that the mayor of boston has explicitly allowed them, but I definitely don't agree that it doesn't take multiple hours to dig out a car after it has snowed 2' or so, Especially if the plows have been by.
Hopefully I counted the negatives there accurately. There's too much snow to math.
I mean sure I went back out there for a couple more hours to widen the driveway, chip ice, etc. but I could have gone somewhere after about an hour of shoveling. The snowblower only really adds efficiency when you're doing long (>30ft) straight stretches.
the public safety stuff is overblown
For all the people whom nothing happened to, sure.
When we parked on the street at our last apartment it definitely took me at least an hour and a half to dig out after big storms. Getting plowed in increases the hassle -- weight, density, iciness -- exponentially.
That's comparing to '78 or to Sandy or to an earthquake, which is what the article is claiming.
"MassDOT said it has worked to clear 1.23 million cubic feet of snow and ice from 78 miles of tracks and stations."
That's, like, one shovelful per commuter. Solution: crowdsourcing!
There's a big-ass front end loader removing snow from our street right now. It's very exciting. On the other hand, we're like twelve dump truck-loads in and there's not all that much visible progress.
"Think about how annoying it is . . . "
I've plenty of my own annoyances, thanks. Fuck off.
If you need to get out of Boston for some relief, I have a car in Cumberland ME that needs dug out. It was supposed to be shipped before the first of the big snows hit, but the shipper turned out to be fucking useless, and then my sister, whose property it's sitting on, went on vacation.
That's comparing to '78
How is this not easily and completely worse than '78? I get it, people didn't get stuck in their cars on 128, but far more people have been materially affected for much longer.
We won't know how bad it really is until the bodies start being discovered during the Spring thaw.
If you aren't in Stalingrad in the winter of '43 you have nothing to complain about. Keep digging.
78 was more like the natural disasters described- abrupt, limited warning, immediate physical threat. This is a different sort of impact that is more economic than, Oh no a building fell on my head. If you want to argue worse that's fine and probably accurate depending what you're measuring, I'm just saying it's nothing like an earthquake.
Which, to finish that comment, is the answer to the "where's the presidential visit, AC360, etc."- sudden disasters are much more amenable to that kind of response than long drawn out ones. Where's the presidential visit for rising sea levels over the last several years in Norfolk VA?
With all shoveling estimates, don't forget to factor in walking somewhere to dump each shovelfull. We have long since passed the time when we could put any more snow on top of the piles adjacent to those places being cleared.
People on the west coast get to mock people on the east coast for having bad weather, and now they also get to mock people on the east coast for claiming that bad weather is bad? What is going on here?
I put it in my recycling bins, roll it down the sidewalk to where the snow isn't 7' high, dump and shovel again. Requires double shoveling but less tossing-the-caber style launching.
You have a place next to the sidewalk where the snow isn't 7' high?!
48: We're practicing loss of all empathy, a trait totally useless in the current state of human affairs.
Wunderground currently says 1-3 inches Saturday, 5-8 inches Wednesday, and 3-5 inches the following Sunday. Obviously not all of that is reliable, but it looks like we're likely to break the total seasonal snowfall record soon. I feel like we're entitled to that, after the last several weeks. Those fuckers from 1995/6 don't deserve to say they won by any metric.
43: I would daydream about being in Stalingrad in 1943.
roll it down the sidewalk to where the snow isn't 7' high
So... the street? The neighbors' sidewalk?
4-5' wherever it's just sidewalk/yard/setback-from-road (verge? berm?) and not near a driveway. Not my fault you live in a city with like 0.05% green space.
At the risk of making everyone feel sorry for me, I'll note that I accidentally closed the log window on SAS. Now I have to either close all my programs and open them up again so that the log is next to the output or forget where the log is every single time I run something.
Yeah, there's no space between sidewalk and street for me. When I shoveled the sidewalk I was just clearing about half of it to make a walkable path and leaving some of the snow in the other half, but then my upstairs neighbor decided the whole sidewalk needed to be clear and threw the snow from the other half of the sidewalk at my windows.
57: I'm sure we can all agree (including the survivors of Stalingrad and Auschwitz) that you have suffered the most of all and we offer you our complete and total sympathy.
Not my fault you live in a city with like 0.05% green space.
You're dumping your snow in Danehy Park?!!
Amusingly, the city (in theory) requires that sidewalks be shoveled to a width of 42". I'm pretty sure a solid percentage of sidewalks in the city aren't that wide in the first place, and of course it's illegal to shovel snow into the street.
Most of the sidewalks in my neighborhood seem to barely have a passable path shoveled in them: a lot of people even left like an inch-deep layer of snow in the "cleared" part. So I thought I was doing a better than necessary job. I guess my neighbor disagreed. (I'm not sure if it was the same upstairs neighbor I heard complaining before.)
61: Have you been reading the municipal code?
Interestingly I just received this "shovel me" map, they're telling everyone where hydrants and drains are to shovel them out.
The city requires you to shovel the snow then pour sufficient concrete to widen the sidewalks to 42", failure to do so is a $50 fine.
If everybody up there would just eat a couple cubic feet of snow each morning, you'd be making some progress.
Which, to finish that comment, is the answer to the "where's the presidential visit, AC360, etc."- sudden disasters are much more amenable to that kind of response than long drawn out ones.
It is true. The president doesn't show up until the third year of drought.
He wasn't brought up understanding water like you and me.
enwhitled
Oh, wow, I'm so appropriating this.
Bostonians, the snow just sucks. I hope at least you may gloat come winter when the West is on fire because you seem to have got all our snow.
22: I hope you are feeling better. We had a lot of snow the winter I and everyone else I knew was pregnant and the stress of having to get to the hospital in the snow is really unreal.
3: our streets are much narrower than, say, Colorado's. the MBTA's infrastructure problems and lack of plows is our own fault.
on enwhitled: A google search brings up only four previous usages of it on the entire internet, three of them here (by Becks/LB, AWB, and Sifu). The fourth is in a comment at the AV Club. Guys you've found an almost entirely novel way to express liberal guilt!
I don't understand why the ambulance ride shouldn't be reimbursed. (I understand why they don't want to pay: they never want to pay for anything.)
74: If it wasn't a medical emergency?
I'm 100% on team Blume/Sifu here. It sounds miserable.
Here, where we recently got around 8" of snow, it took several hours to shovel out my car (long driveway: ~50 yards). And just now when I got home, some jackhole had parked in my shoveled-out spot. In my driveway. That's pretty gauche. That's right, Lexus-SUV-driving motherfucker: I called you gauche on the internet.
Based on reports from Boston, your options are to bury their car with snow, key the paint, slash their tires, draw on their windshield with lipstick, or leave an angry note.
76: I'm pretty sure you can legally have somebody towed if they parked in your actual driveway.
Where do you put your car in the mean time?
75 -- I needed to go to the hospital right then from 22, sounds like a medical emergency to me. She didn't have to go right then because their 2 for 1 special on bullshit procedures was about to expire.
79: I kinda halfway parked him in, in a passive-aggressive move. He can still get out, but it's going to take a several-point turn.
80: Could be, or one of their visitors, or a visitor to the guys who live in front of me. I don't recognize the car.
I agree that space savers are horrible and it's loathsome that the mayor of boston has explicitly allowed them,
I don't want to hear this from people who have driveways. Anyway I decided that my car makes a really good parking space saver, and I'm taking buses and cabs everywhere. Still cheaper than parking downtown, which you can't do anyway, since people who would normally park on the street are in the paid lots now.
67 made me giggle. Melting all that would have to be good for weight loss.
82: I hope you at least left a nasty note.
77: Could you instead build a ramp onto the roof of their car double park vertically?
"where's the presidential visit, AC360, etc."-
Jesus Christ, traffic is bad enough without a fucking presidential visit.
83: fair. But also to be fair I never used one when we parked on the street. But to be, on the third hand, fair, our solution was generally to not move our car unless absolutely necessary.
Hmmm. I was there for 1995-96 and I literally don't remember it being noticably bad.
Those fuckers from 1995/6 don't deserve to say they won by any metric.
I'm only one fucker, but as far as I'm concerned this is correct.
89: That's true for me, too, F. I can't figure out the difference: is it that I was younger and hardier then, or that without the internet we didn't know the magnitude of what was happening?
53: We tied for number 2 (1993-1994). I'm sure that we'll be bove 93-94's totals after Saturday.
Amusingly, the city (in theory) requires that sidewalks be shoveled to a width of 42".
Which is a nonsense measurement from any sort of life/safety or accessibility POV. You need 60" for 2 wheelchairs to pass (when you encroach on a sidewalk for stairs or a ramp, that's how much they want you to leave clear), 36" is minimum for any kind of interior corridor, 44" is minimum for a large commercial corridor, and you need 48" for a wheelchair to make a 90° turn between 2 corridors. I'm pretty sure someone plucked 42" from thin air.
61:Let me bring back my proposal to make sidewal clearing a municipal responsibility. In Canada, the cities have sidewalk plows. The sidewalk isn't even the property of an individual owner; why shouldn't it be a communal responsibility.
I only have to shovel my car out, because our landlord does the sidewalk, but still.
93: Average width of a Red Sox fan.
91: It was more spread out, and it probably melted between storms. 92-93 was a snowy year in the Merrimack Valley, and I remember 93-94 as snowy in Cambridge (lots of cafeteria tray sledding), but I don't remember 95-96 as worse. If anything, it seemed less snowy. But by the numbers, I'm obviously wrong.
We're well beyond plowing for sidewalks helping; the uncleared half of the sidewalk is usually 4+ feet and solidly compacted. It needs to be lifted up and stacked up if not actually removed.
Personally, it's been merely annoying, but I live half a mile from the (~colocated) subway station and day care, so at worst I was putting the kid in a backpack carrier and walking. With some of the sidewalk paths effectively unshoveled trenches of other people's footsteps at the time I was doing it, it's a tricky balancing act. (At least three of the storms have peaked during the AM commute, just to be more aggravating).
93-94 featured some impressive storms, but 95-96 (in Pittsburgh) is the only winter I remember where it felt as if there was fresh snow every other day for months, and also the only time I've ever been really resentful of people taking spaces I'd shoveled out.
The other years definitely featured more melting. The stat I saw was that since these snows started it's only been above freezing for 28 total hours (and only up to about 36F, so not *much* melting then).
97: Yeah. In Ottawa they also have more snow farms and regularly remove the snow. I just meant that, as a general principle, it seems silly to make sidewalk clearing an individual responsibility.
My landlord had construction equipment removing some from our parking lot/driveway.
With as much fighting between Boston-area commenters as we're having on this thread, it's probably a good thing none of you can get out of your houses. Otherwise there'd be a bloodbath.
Oh, I think we can all get out, it's just that we don't have any time to have a meetup fistfight, because all extra time is going to commuting or shoveling or moving the pile of shoveled snow to a different place because another foot is coming and we need space to put it.
Google reminds me that 1995-96 was the year we got 21 inches on April 10. Fun times.
Basically the native Sox fans are wimps but Yankee transplants to the area can handle it.
103- I remember that one, the school's tennis bubble right outside my dorm collapsed.
Actually on google that was April 1 storm in 1997.
103: In 97 we got a huge dump on April 1. It was a funny snow--kind of fluffy--not heavy--but moist.
Which is relevant to this thread because he's another athlete whose height can be used to measure the amount of snow.
This not to say that we couldn't *use* a meetup, or some other more acceptable excuse for the current heavy drinking.
(My homebrew club did have our black-tie fancy-restaurant bar crawl just after the first big part of the storm; fortunately, it was all in a well-enough-cleared part of downtown).
more acceptable excuse for the current heavy drinking
GET BUSY EATING THAT SNOW ALREADY
So lazy.
Basically the native Sox fans are wimps but Yankee transplants to the area can handle it have snowblowers.
FTFY!
We desperately want to be the 1%, we just hadn't managed to buy a snowblower before this winter.
I should note a big failure of capitalism this winter- hardware/home improvement stores take away their stock of winter stuff starting roughly in February, including snowblowers (and snowblower auger belts!) which resulting in a loss of sales for them and consumers who are not feeling the love of the invisible hand. Surely there's a solution to this besides just ordering from Amazon? Or are they willing to just take the occasional lost sales in exchange for avoiding the cost of stocking stuff for an extra month in non-bizarre winters?
How is it that we're on the verge of having self-driving cars, but we don't yet have cars that can dig themselves out of the goddam snowbank?
115: Or do they just run out? A local independent hardware store owner just drove to Maine to buy shovels, so he was stocked. Beacon Hill people are well served by the invisible hand.
That works much better if you say it in a cooing voice- does my widdle boy want a wovel?
The April 1st 1997 storm convinced me to move to California.
120
It took me 4 more years to figure out that solution.
84: Melting all that would have to be good for weight loss.
Actually more than I would have thought. Let's say a cubic foot of packed snow is 1/3 the density of water, so say ~20 lbs., latent heat of fusion is 36,000 calories/pound -> 720,000 calories. Of course food Calories are kilocalories, so about 720 Calories plus ~320 Calories to heat it up to body temperature. (Drinking an ice cold drink uses about 8 Calories (assuming the ice melts in the drink, not inside of you).
I was thinking about calculating how much snow I could melt if I brought my gas grill out to the sidewalk, how many tanks of propane to melt the bank, but then I figured someone else would have done this if it made any thermodynamic sense at all. I've seen stories of people arrested for flamethrower use but I figured they didn't do the math, they just wanted an excuse to make and use a flamethrower.
My shoveling method has been to wake up to find my neighbor -- with the very failing liver who is on the transplant list, assuming he's been clean for the past 6 mos. -- has already done all the work.
I figured someone else would have done this if it made any thermodynamic sense at all
I tried to do an estimate of whether it made sense to try to regularly bring snow inside and dump it into my sink to melt, but it seemed like it wouldn't make a big enough difference rapidly enough to be worth the effort.
124: You can't count on that. He might get a liver and decide surgery is more important than your walk being clear.
127: Could anyone really be the selfish? Surely not.
Surely there's a solution to this besides just ordering from Amazon?
I'm told the north shore is experiencing a rash of snow-blower thefts.
So you're saying the free-market solution is to steal my snowblower? Don't give Sifu and Blume any ideas...
For cumulative snow impact, some measure like inch-days of snow depth is needed. And in fact the real measure of impact might be inch-day of snow depth above impact threshold* might be more relevant. By those measures, I'm sure this winter outstrips prior snowy Boston years of recent memory. You get on the order of 2 standard deviations outside of any important meteorological variable for a place and it tends to have real impact on the functioning of a place. Having it over for a sufficient period of time such that stopgap countermeasures reveal themselves as non-sustainable is a real problem.
*Estimation of impact threshold left as an exercise for the reader.
I thought we had agreed, as English speakers, never to use the word "moist" again.
I thought we had agreed, as English speakers, never to use the word "moist" again.
Except on those two occasions, obviously.
Well that was like the setup to a joke. Just waited on packed platform and rode train with my kid's friend's dad, an unfogged commenter, and my boss.
Your kid's friend's dad is both your boss and an Unfogged commenter?
If Boston had thought to install heated roads and sidewalks, they wouldn't be having this problem.
That's the kind of leadership we need. ogged for mayor!
Could hardly do worse than frickin' Maaahty.
I feel like the ways that the Boston commentariat -- who know and are fond of each other -- have gotten crabby at each other in this thread are so evocative of Boston right now. It's like the whole city is a sold out cross country budget red eye flight.
Where someone has decided to recline their seat.
Our grad students' annual puppet show making fun of faculty is tonight. Now I have to decide if I value being polite to them and hearing my senior colleagues getting skewered over staying home and being warm. I bet they'll get a record low turnout.
144: It's a red eye! That's like the one time when it's actually okay to recline your seat.
This juxtaposed with the Just World thread offers so much low hanging fruit.
I feel like Job. Pwned on my own correction.
What's going to suck for Boston even worse than all this snow is the horrible melting period, during which it will rain and make everything treacherously slippery, and the melting goop will re-freeze repeatedly, and people of small stature will disappear forever into slush puddles of unknown depth at certain intersections.
143: Snow suppresses the virus that suppresses the natural tendency of Bostonians to be repelled by each other.
Yeah, fuck it, I'm staying home. Grad student humor sucks anyway.
151: You should have seen the corner of Mass Ave across from the law school (what is that, Everett Street?) a week and a half ago or so. Crossing the street required either swimming or scaling a 10-foot high snow pile to slide down the other side onto dry ground.
152: it makes us into New Yorkers! No wonder SP is thriving.
115: Surely there's a solution to this besides just ordering from Amazon?
This is joke, right? Because how on earth would a mail-order shipment be delivered?
Yah.
At any rate, having lived in Mass. for 13 years, man, my sympathies to all of you.
Oh, no, wasn't a joke- I mean things are closed 2-3 days each week but open the rest. I went to home despot, saw they were out (and not just out but already switched over to lawn care for the spring), went home and ordered, and I got my auger belts in the usual two days. You probably could order a snowblower from them too, it's just another example of physical stores being stuck in existing retail patterns.
The Home Depot clerk tried to convince me I should buy a 37 inch lawn mower belt smooth belt instead when I needed a toothed 35 inch belt- they're almost the same size she said.
You could just move the mower shaft one incn farther from shaft that comes off the engine and it would fit perfectly.
My daisy wneel must nave a worn out 'n.'
||
Most intense l'esprit de l'escalier evar:
J'accuse Charlie
Fuck/Merde.
||>
You pantywaists think you have it bad, I've been on crutches for the past 6 weeks. Good excuse to avoid shoveling, though.
I was just reminded of the closure of the Long Island shelters. This bitter cold would be devastating for the homeless no matter what, but it's even worse now without those places to stay.
143: we need to schedule a fistfight meetup.
It's a red eye! That's like the one time when it's actually okay to recline your seat.
Is not.
Yes. I feel strongly about this. Strongly enough to argue on the internet.
I remember a winter walk down Somerville Ave when the sidewalk was a single-file line of deep, icy postholes. On the opposite side of the street was a blind person with a white cane. I didn't go help. When someone invents a time machine that allows me to go back in time and kick myself, this will be my first stop.
But you won't use the time machine to help anyone. Otherwise you might change the future.
172: It would anyway! Unless 171 was supposed to read "I didn't go help. Then an older version of me appeared and kicked me. When someone invents a time machine that allows me to go back in time and kick myself, this will be my first stop."
173, 174: In which proximate thread is there a Dukakis discussion? I'm up for talk of Jindal.
179: I know, it's really sad. it sounds like he was horribly bullied.
sorry about the snow, bostonians. I hate that my mom and sister are legally required to shovel an infinitely long stretch of sidewalk because of our long lot. they are both too ill to do it; it's ridiculous. I mean, they are on disability. it can't be governmentally correct that people on disability are legally required to do something intensely physically taxing within 12 hours of a snowfall, or whatever. but that's DC, they can't even plough the streets, so it's no use hoping they could do the sidewalks.
180:
(1.) Is there someone that they can hire?
(2.) Is there an exemption? In Cambridge, MA the city will do it if you are elderly or disabled and below a certain income.
There's a web site here that's supposed to link volunteers with people who can't shovel their walk.
I'm surprised shovlr.com doesn't point at something like that.
182: It is, however, true that DC is pretty inefficient and might not be competent to put a website like that up.
Nobody has cleared walks today in my area, even businesses that are usually good. Our local North Face is closed due to "inclement weather," which I found kind of funny. Probably 2/3 of the local shops and restaurants closed early this afternoon.
(We got about 5" of snow. Southern efficiency.)
that's good advice, guys, thanks. there surely is an exemption. roving crews of central american guys do usually come around to offer their services, but last time I paid them they neglected about a third of the job (either not noticing or pretending not to notice that adjacent to our driveway, on the other side of the house, there's a huge yard). it's sort of too much yard for my mom and sister now. and if you miss their knock you're out of luck.
I suppose the best snow removal people stay in Central America and the lesser lights have to emigrate.
I'm watching Morse again. If I get transported back in time to England in the late 80s and I need to kill somebody, I need some idea of what the investigation will be like. Anyway, I'm struck that they just have two guys lift away the body in a bag. No stretcher or anything wheeled.
it was a different time. thatcherite cuts meant only five police officers investigated every crime in the city of london.
I just figured all the murder victims were thinner.
179 makes me feel sick.
When my baby sister was 18, she tried to kill herself, and she damn near succeeded. Though, thankfully, she did not succeed, she made it through.
She was in a coma, and they had put this charcoal, maybe? under her eyes to absorb the poison, which gave her this weird raccoon look. I saw her lying out on a hospital bed (it looked like a slab, she looked like a corpse) with these streaks of charcoal under her eyes as they were wheeling her into intensive care to "work on" her, and Holy Mother of God, I still have nightmares.
The workaday machinery of medical efficiency, combined with the sheer terror of girl-in-coma who "might not make it;" the relatives driving up from Toronto in the middle of the night because "she might not make it;" the priest called in at 3 a.m. to administer last rites; and my parents, in the "family waiting room," just utterly overwhelmed by grief as they awaited the arrival of the priest; and my father breaking down as he contemplated last rites for his youngest, and truly beloved, child.
When my baby sister later "came out" as gay, my trad. Irish Catholic parents were so grateful to have her still with us, they were like, "Anything goes!," and the gay thing was just a minor detail.
Good lord, I'm sorry, Zoé. There was no suicide attempt (afaik), but my mother's Catholic family was also pretty readily accepting of their only son's homosexuality (given the alternative of losing him). He has, like all but one of his five sisters, had a happy and devoted long relationship/marriage with a charming guy, which probably made it easier. I remember learning that he was gay (and what that meant) when I was eight, and feeling very happy for him that he really was in love with someone and wasn't this sad dude who had to bring his roommate to all the family gatherings.
190: well, there are only about 20 people in the whole country and the rest of us are all busy being Queen or stabbing each other.
I'm a filthy, sanctimonious hypocrite. Remember how only th other week I was giving all of you people a hard time about unnecessary driving in bad conditions?
I spent last night white-knuckling my way home from Vermont through weather that varied between heavy snow, heavy sleet, and heavy rain (following a preexisting heavy coating of snow and ice on the roads). An ordinarily four hour drive took eight -- traffic was moving at between twenty and forty most of the way.
Why didn't I stop? I was in a rental car I had to return last night (ultimately got home so late the place was closed), and I had a friend of Sally's with us who I wanted to get home to her parents. And I kept on thinking conditions were going to improve.
Conditions were never, acutely, that bad. I never skidded, and I could always see at least a few tail lights ahead of me. But there certainly weren't any lines visible on the road surface most of the way home, and certainly no one should have been driving.
Anyway, I can't judge you people, I'm just as bad as all of you. But cars are still a terrible thing.
179 sucks mightily. It definitely sounds like he got bullied a lot.
192 gave me a lump in my throat. Glad to hear it sounds like she came out okay.
194. Don't forget at least 2 o 3 of you are actors too.
Thanks, Zoe, for sharing that. It meant a lot to me. I'm glad I didn't manage to end my story at 18. There have been some really good parts since.