Dear Adversity,

Why must you embarrass yourself like this? It’s obvious you keep trying, and yet consistently I laugh in your face. Ha. Like so.

You have made my long, winding, and steep driveway impassable to all but the most impressive of machines. Did you think I would wither away for want of groceries and the companionship of my peers? Aha, ha ha. I think not.

You have taken for granted just how hungry I am for friends. You’re also doing me the favor of shaving inches off my thighs and building muscle tone. As for the groceries, I may be the mother of invention as well as three children, because I have a sled. So there, take that.

I planned ahead for this ridiculous weather of yours. By the way, have you heard of a thing called over–kill? Sheesh, what are you compensating for? But I digress. I planned ahead for these storms. I stocked up on pellets for the wood pellet stove. It didn’t matter that the drive was already too slick to make it all the way up. These are mere details, inconveniences you throw before me that I easily step around, as I carry ten forty-pound bags of pellets up to my
garage.

Power outages? Please. We’ve been through that before. Remember the huge thunderstorm when you broke the gutter above the egress window; when the view from my girl’s room became a murky aquarium? I bailed out shoulder-high water, with a bucket, in the middle of the storm.
Not having any electricity for a shower or a hair dryer afterwards didn’t faze me then, why should losing heat in a blizzard freak me out?

I got all ingenious with my pesky dependence on heat to stay alive in a blizzard. I rigged up a marine boat battery with an inverter so I could run the pellet stove for two days. I splurged on a real generator in case the power went out for longer. I have to admit it, you almost got me with the stove malfunction. That was well played Adversity, well played indeed. If I’d been listening to Intuition I could have seen that one coming. It’s unnatural and evil to put too much technology and industry into an affair that is, at its heart, so simple.

Wood pellet stoves are stupid, stupid things. The fact that they require electricity to operate an auger to feed store bought pellets into a fire puts two things in between me and my heat. I should have known better. Wood pellet stoves are just a lie from when suburbanites got all warm and fuzzy for alternative heat as gas and oil prices rose. The fact that Businessman Bob can pour a bag of wood into the fire without changing out of his dress pants makes it obvious to whom they were marketing. The allure and magic of burning wood, without the chainsaw outdoorsy thing has your friend Deception’s name all over it. How’s he been lately? Do you guys still have that pick up basketball game on Thursdays?

Anyway, credit where it’s due. The stove was near genius. Especially that part where it seemed I’d figured out the problem, only to go and break it myself irreparably. I’ve learned my lesson. A simple woodstove will do fine in the future. No silly middlemen in between me and what I need. It doesn’t matter that I’m a small weakling with no upper body strength. I can fell a tree, chop, split and stack the wood with the sheer power of my will alone.

I know what all this effort is on your part. It’s so transparent. You only pay so much attention to me because you like me. Admit it. Like a little boy tugging the braids of the girl at the desk in front of him, you want me. I know, I’m nearly irresistible on a lot of levels. It might be the crazy curly hair (don’t think I don’t know you tighten these springy boingers each night); it might be the stretch marks and scars. It’s obvious that you and I have had more than a passing association. But that’s over now. I am simply not available and you just have to move on.

I don’t think a restraining order should be necessary. I think it’s clear I can defend myself against your advances. For that matter, you’d best not make me mad. I would recommend that you don’t cancel school again. If you do, the heat of my rage might melt all this snow. Oh, and don’t bother trying to get smart, breaking the rope on my sled. I have shoelaces, and I’m not afraid to use them.

Yours, (in a figurative sense only)

The hot chick with the can-do attitude

P.S. Tell Deception I like what he's been doing with my mirrors. I've never looked so good.