OK, I'll admit it: I'm not a big fan of winter. Sure, sliding around on the snow in my car is fun for a little while, and seeing it on the ground at Christmas is nice enough, but pretty soon I'm ready for something else.

This year, "pretty soon" started last Thursday, two days before Christmas.

Like a lot of the Midwest, and particularly Ohio, we got dumped on with snow and then freezing rain last Wednesday night. With a quarter-inch or more of ice on everything it's beautiful but a bit like living in a glazed donut. At any rate, Thursday morning, like clockwork, I heard my next-door neighbor snow-blowing my front walk at about 6 AM.

A quick defensive explanation may be appropriate here.

We live on a corner lot. Because of that, we have an inordinate amount of sidewalk on our property. Several years ago I got tired of all the grass hanging over all the pavement and looking scruffy so I bought a nice power edger to clean it up with. Well, the edger did such a great job it looked just entirely stupid where our property ended and the neighbors' began.

I mean, there was this nice perfect edge along our sidewalk and then it just...ended. At a more or less arbitrary point with, well, scruffy grass afterward. It looked dumber than before I'd edged, when both our yard and the neighbors' looked equally bad, so I went over to Tim, my neighbor, and asked if he cared if I edged his sidewalk, too. Not surprisingly, he was delighted.

Anyway, skip forward to that winter. He'd bought a snow blower and decided to return the favor by blowing off my driveway and main walk one particularly snowy morning. Ever since, I do the edging in the summer, he does the snow blowing in the winter.

We're like the shark with the sucker-fish-thingy on its back. If you get my drift.

So, anyway, as I was saying, Thursday morning, from the warmth of my bed, I heard Tim coming up the walk with his snow blower, laughing to myself about how much better a part of the deal it is to be the guy doing the warm-weather work, when all of a sudden it just stopped. The blower, that is. Not your sputtering I'm-about-to-run-out-of-gas stop, this was more of an I-got-caught-on-something-and-jammed-like-a-motherfucker kind of stop. Then a restart and another immediate stop. I knew what it was, probably before he did.

Extension cord. Lying across the sidewalk. Powering the outdoor Christmas lights. My fault.

Crap.

So, out of bed I went. Tim and I spent half an hour huddled in my garage wrestling extension cord bits from his blade with pliers and a razor knife. So much for the warmth and comfort of my bed. And, so much for the Christmas lights.

Not that it mattered much because 90 minutes later a branch from a huge tree in our backyard broke loose and crashed into Tim's backyard, taking out parts of both of our fences and the electricity of six neighborhood homes, his and mine included.

Double crap.

Shortly before, I'd heard on TV that more than 140,000 homes in Columbus were already without power. I called in our outage but already knew what was going to happen. With only six homes affected, we were screwed. Small potatoes. Not a priority. We were there for the duration.

My parents were visiting, for Christmas, from Florida. They don't like winter even a little bit these days so by noon they'd run like rats from a sinking ship, straight to Cincinnati and my brother's (nice warm) house.

Traitors.

The first night, Thursday, we went to a hotel.

But the next morning my neighbor on the other side, Bruce (yes, I edge his yard, too), who was also power-free, came up with an idea. The guy on the other side of him had juice. Bruce got a Big Mother extension cord and ran it from The House With Juice to his own basement, where he was able to hot-wire the blower on his (gas) furnace and at least get the heat going. Then he came looking for me saying, "Get your own Big Mother extension cord and maybe we can get your furnace running, too."

Well, $100 worth of extension cords and a couple of hours of cussing later I can tell you that the drop in amperage over 250 feet of even the best extension cords is too much for my furnace to cope with. No heat for the Goods.

That night was Christmas Eve and, as any parents of preschool-aged children know, there is Work Which Has To Be Done on Christmas Eve. No hotel for us, single-digit outside temperatures notwithstanding.

So, we shipped the kids off to Aunt Kitty, lit a big fire, and built bicycles in the basement by flashlight. Eventually, under about a foot of comforters, Sarah and I settled down on the couch in the living room (near the fireplace) for our long winter's nap. It was actually quite nice until at about 5 AM when I needed to visit the 20-ish-degree bathroom. There was no dallying to read, I can tell you that.

In the morning we collected the children, rebuilt the fire and, with the kids wearing winter coats, mittens, and embedded in a slew of comforters, got down to The Business Of The Day. Then bailed for Aunt Kitty's.

That night, while enjoying Christmas dinner at yet another relative's (nice warm) house, our power came on and, with it, our heat. Yea!

Well, almost yea.

It turns out pipes can freeze even when the power is on. Well, really, frozen, which is to say broken, pipes thaw once the heat comes on. Then water comes out. A lot. I learned this when, at about 6:30 Sunday morning, I decided to get up and went quietly downstairs only to hear the sound of splashing water coming from, it turned out, the ceiling of the downstairs bathroom.

Is there such a thing as triple-crap?

And, isn't it about time for Spring yet? I've had just about enough winter for one year, thanks.