That Dreaded Winter Chore

It's that time of year again.  It has me shaking with dreaded anticipation at the coming event; perhaps one of my least favorites of the year.  Those of you who live in warmer climates are now going, "What on Earth is she talking about?  The holidays are over, and it's been snowing for months already.  Does she need a shot?  A dental visit perhaps?"  No, it isn't anything of that nature.  I'm not dying, my bi-anual dental visit is still several months away, and yes of course it's been snowing for months.  No, it's much more horrifying than any of that.

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"Ah," say my fellow lazy Northeast Ohioans with a sad shake of their heads, "she's run out of windshield fluid."  Allow me to explain.  While the average normal person who lives in a place where the seasons do not rapidly and violently change from Sahara Desert to Alaskan wasteland likely re-fills their wiper fluid once every two or three years - often enough that the kind people who change your oil usually throw it in as a courtesy - we Clevelanders find ourselves doing it every 6-10 months, or once a year for those who are frugal.  Inevitably however, the time to change it occurs in the winter.  I can't speak for everyone in the tri-county area, but I find that my own reasoning behind this goes something like this:

I wake up every morning.  No matter what time I do so, I am always running late or in a hurry.  I shower, dress, brush my teeth, etcetera, and proceed to rush outside where, just before falling face-first down my now ice-covered steps, I stop short and realize that it has snowed overnight and that snow is now frozenly attached to my windshield.  While people who are not in a big rush are content to wade through the two foot tall pile of snow which the plow man has unceremoniously dumped more or less all around their cars, I haven't the time.  Hopping into my vehicle, I crank up the front and rear defrost.  While this is working, I roll down each of the windows in turn, using the snow scraper as an arm to whack them, thus vibrating all of the excess snow off.  Checking back with my defrosting front and rear windows, I find that they aren't melting at a pace that satisfactorily satisfies my schedule.  What next?  I do what any thick blooded woman raised in the frozen tundra of Cleveland would do - go for the windshield fluid.  That lovely blue liquid has been sitting warming itself in my toasty V6 engine and should be able to help melt the ice at a more rapid pace.  Does it work?  Naturally, however by executing this plan I have successfully wasted a huge amount of wiper fluid, but what do I care?  I'm on my way to work and my neighbor is still back there scraping the ice off the windows of his station wagon.

This is the point where I run into several problems.  

1.  I know that I purchased windshield fluid some time last year, likely around February or March, and I know that I had plenty left over but I can't find it.

2.  I know this because when you live in Northeast Ohio, it is physically impossible to buy just one gallon of the toxic looking blue substance.  No matter where you go they're selling it - the gas station, the drug store, the grocery store, the garden store, I may have even seen a pet friendly variety at the pet store one time.  Clearly finding a place to purchase it is not the problem.  The issue lies with the fact that no matter where you go to purchase your product, the store is inevitably offering a deal like "buy one get one free" or even "buy one get two free."  Sure, you just want one gallon, but they force the other two onto you anyhow.

3.  Herein lies our third problem.  After I slog my way out to the gas station, attempt to refuse the two extra gallons of windshield fluid and am all but forced to take it with me due to "company policy," I am faced with a new question: where do I store the extra?  I'll have to put it somewhere I will remember it, but somewhere where it is out of the way.  Doing this is more of a challenge than you would think.  I don't have a garage, and if I put it in the shed I can almost guarantee someone will steal it.  Putting it under the sink will result in it being pushed out of the way and hidden behind the numerous cleaning chemicals that I seem to buy but never use, and sticking it in the attic will make me forget it instantly.  If only I had a garage.  But wait!  I do!  Whilst I told myself when I moved out two years ago that I wouldn't go running back to mommy and daddy every time I needed something, I've made the discovery that their house is quite a convenient place for item storage.  It isn't too far away, and it's quite large so my storage options are really unlimited (unless of course I'm looking to stable a dinosaur or a heard of elephants).  So I take the 20 minute drive out of the city to get to my parent's house, enter their garage and locate a suitable corner to hide my burden until the time comes next year that I will need it again and finally unearth what was such an issue in problem one - my two missing gallons of leftover fluid from last winter, plus a third which may or may not be an extra from the year before that.   Well shit.  Lucky for me the stuff doesn't expire.  I add my two new bottles to the mix and make myself a larger mental post-it that this is where I've left them for next year.

4.  Four?  You mean to tell us that this isn't the end of the problems, and there are still more issues to deal with?  Folks this is me we're talking about here, of course there is.  Normally I like to think of myself as an advanced member of the female species, idolizing Rosie the Riveter, women can do anything men can do, that sort of thing.  I've even on many occasions (with the help of my roommate's father, who I adopted as my own during my college years) changed the oil, spark plugs, headlight bulbs, and even a battery once, in the various cars that I've owned.  Never have I done anything under the hood of this one however and frankly for no valid reason the prospect terrifies me.  The idea of going out into the sub-freezing outdoors, opening my hood, locating the little screw top with the picture of the windshield on it, and then proceeding to fill it without the aid of a funnel has completely escaped me for no rational reason.  

5.  Which brings us to problem number five: getting Boyfriend or Daddy to do it for me.  Not as easy as it sounds.  Somewhere down the line with my pants wearing, beer drinking, look-at-me-I-can-burp-and-fart like-a-man lifestyle, I effectively managed to shoot myself in the foot and render the possibility of any future male-given help completely null.  I could call in a Daddy-favor at this point, but I'd rather save those for when I run out of food or the power company is banging down my door threatening to turn off my electricity.  Boyfriend it is.  

From this point on, my actions require a great deal of stealth and planning.  I'm a chubby, large breasted, James Bond.  First order of business is determining what time he will be waking up the next day.  Easily done by simply asking, "Do you work tomorrow?"  I then make sure to rise at least 3 hours before the projected hour of his waking in order to ensure sufficient time to complete step two: locating the largest spider possible.  Easier said than done when living in the depths of an arctic wasteland.  Once a sufficiently large arachnid has been located and procured with the aid of a paper towel and a tupperware container, I settle down to wait for the alarm to go off.  Once this occurrs, I have approximately one minute to place the spider in a highly visible place within our small bathroom.  I normally try and place it in a dry corner of the shower, as things you're afraid of become infinitely more terrifying when you're naked and wet.  I then grab my freshly purchased gallon of windshield fluid and settle down in the kitchen to wait for the frightened womanly scream that indicates Boyfriend's discovery of the eight-legged shower invader.  Before he has time to direct the shower spray at the vicinity of the poor defenseless spider, I rush into the bathroom to his aid, toting my big blue bottle behind me.  "I'll get it!" I declare with much gusto, "But only if you fill up my windshield fluid."  He glares at me, then glances back at the spider and reluctantly holds out his hand for the bottle.  I've won this round, and gleefully scrape the likely terrified spider back into the tupperware and return it to wherever I found it in the first place (in case I should need it again.)

So you see, this is why upon seeing that menacing little bulb light up on my dashboard this afternoon I immediately let out a defeated sigh and pulled in to the nearest gas station to acquire my inevitable three gallons of windshield fluid, along with a large bar of chocolate and some hot tea to calm my quickly frazzling nervous system.  Obviously I didn't remember until later today, after I'd discarded my receipt, that I indeed was already in possession of several gallons of the stuff and was storing it in my mother's garage.  Tomorrow morning will be spent hunting for a gargantuan fear-inducing spider, and hopefully the culmination of events will result in me once again having wiper fluid in my car.  Or perhaps this will be the year I end up putting it in myself.