Blizzards
Jennifer Flaten

Well, here we are rapidly approaching the end of 2012. I’m not sure if I am pleased or disappointed the apocalypse was a dud. On the plus side, since the world didn’t end, I got to open my presents; on the negative side the rest of the world is still here in all its idiotic glory.

I was too busy shoveling snow to worry about the end of the world. Yes, snow.  For the first time in 2 years, our area had a blizzard. A real blizzard is not one of those made for television blizzards.

In a television blizzard the streets, and more importantly, your driveway remain miraculously clear, in a real blizzard, the snowplow comes by and buries the end of your driveway in two feet of snow.

To make matters worse, he does this at 2 am so, when you go outside at 7 am, the wall of snow resembles the iceberg that bought down the Titanic. Nothing short of a tank is getting through the snow. Still, at this point, trapped in the house, with three Christmas-crazed children, for a day and a half, if you don’t get out, something bad will take place. Not that I am speaking from personal experience or anything.

I decided that, despite the weather, it was important that I get a replacement watchband. Damn the snowstorm. Yes, I was that desperate to get out of the house. I really did need a watchband though.

I have two types of watches, a daytime watch and a nighttime watch. The daytime watch is fancy-it has animated singing frogs on it. The nighttime watch, a Timex Ironman watch, is purely utilitarian.

The best feature the Ironman watch offers is the light up display and the alarm. Why do I need a special night watch’ no, it’s not because I am weird. I have children. I frequently need to see what time it is in the middle of the night.

For example, I might use the watch to check what time it is when I hear a kid sneaking into the living room on Christmas Eve. For the record, it was at 2 am. It also explains why I also like having the alarm strapped to my wrist, one that beeps insistently so I can’t ignore it, you would too if you spent all of Christmas Eve patrolling the living room and finally fell asleep at 4 am. The alarm helpfully wakes you up at 6 am.

Anyway, the strap broke-again. This is the third strap. Now the original strap that came with the watch lasted fifteen years before disintegrating. The first replacement strap broke within two years; yeah, the watch is that old, so am I. The next strap didn’t even make it a year.

Therefore, off down the snowy streets we went in search of a replacement strand. I will condense a very long and frustrating search into a few words. No one wears watches anymore. At least that is what every clerk told me at the five stores I visited in search of a new band. None of the stores carried bands, but ironically, they carried watches.

Apparently, what the clerks meant was no one wants to take the time to replace a broken band, instead just toss the watch and buy a new one. Hmm, let me see $8, the price I paid for last replacement band or $25 for a new watch.

I declined to buy a new watch, instead I Mcguyvered a solution. It involves a safety pin, it is ugly but it works.