Return of the Nosebleed

I have been blitzed by nosebleeds several times since Utah's 2013 performance of the winter magic trick of transforming from the Sahara into Siberia.

Many a morning here in Hometown it's been between five and twelve degrees Fahrenheit. When the temperature finally rose above twenty, I stepped outside barefoot with no jacket, and La Petite rolled her car windows down.

This ridiculous weather has adversely affected my nose. It bleeds even more frequently than usual. My nose, that is. Not the weather. 'Cause weather doesn't bleed, you silly. Not even in Siberia.

I went to help my grandmother set up Christmas decorations in her gimonstrous house. This mostly consisted of hanging red velveteen bows from the greenery strung on the windows all year long.

Now, these bows are some twenty-five years old, and for every year of their existence they have been placed on the window greenery before Christmas and removed promptly after.

Apparently for the past twenty-five years my grandmother has been practicing witchcraft. I have zero other explanations for how she ever managed to get the bows in the greenery before her back got so bad, because I simply could not do it. Those bows would not stay where I put them.

My grandmother also desired me to pin certain parts of the greenery higher up on the wall with thumbtacks. However, the greenery was thick and the thumbtacks were tiny and the bows got in the way and I was standing on a stool, trying to force the tacks into the wall and the greenery over the thumbtacks and bows onto the greenery, sweating and snarling like a feral husky while my grandmother watched from her couch and rued the fact that roughly a quarter of my genes come from her.

And then, nosebleed.