We haven’t had much snow here in the great northeast this year. We’re 250 miles east of Buffalo, New York, the city that was slammed at Christmas. Normally, we’ve had several snowstorms by this time every winter, but this year is different. California is being inundated by rain and floods after having suffered from major droughts and devastating fires. The floods won’t eliminate the droughts and fires but may help somewhat in the short run.

But today we have mixed precipitation–rain, sleet, freezing rain and snow. Give me good old-fashioned snow instead of this stuff. In snow, if you have to drive, you have a chance. In this stuff, you never know what you’re dealing with.

I’m staying home tonight. I was supposed to play tennis at 7, but we all decided that since the weather was so strange, we’d cancel for tonight. My husband and I have a routine on nights I stay home: We watch “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy!” together. We try to outwit the contestants and laugh about how–let’s just say–little we know about the categories.

I’ve always said that if I were to be on Jeopardy!, my nightmare categories would be opera, anagrams, classical music, 18th-century poetry, Chinese geography, scientific discoveries, and rivers of the world. My husband says his would be sports heroes, pop culture, hip-hop music, football, architects, and Central American geography. His best categories would be the Bible, European history and culture, the Catholic Church, 19th Century literature, history of aviation, and medicine. I don’t even know what my best categories would be. I cannot even fathom trying out for the show. It’s so much easier, watching from my recliner chair in my living room, with a dachshund on my lap!

Wheel of Fortune is even easier to solve. We get a kick out of trying to beat the contestants at solving the puzzles. We know the living room environment makes things a heck of a lot easier than being under the lights in front of a live audience, broadcasting to the entire nation, waiting for a Pat Sajak wise crack, but it leads to a lot of laughs.

A lot of laughs are sometimes hard to come by because my husband has been battling severe depression for years. Having fun watching these shows is a relief from the everyday struggles of dealing with dumb things that happen in life everyday–weather, paying bills, dealing with appliance and other homeowner issues…Well, anyone who’s reading this knows what I mean.

Tonight, following regular Jeopardy!, they played an episode of celebrity Jeopardy!. The contestants were really funny, so we had bonus laughs tonight. We didn’t even have to wait for a Pat Sajak wise crack tonight. Never mind the wild outfit Vanna was wearing last night…

Bill Fischer “meeting” William Butler Yeats in Sligo, Ireland, November, 2018