The Salt Diaries: He Just Wanted To Go For a Walk

The girl looks at her dog. He seems to be a bit frustrated. He wants to go for a walk.

After the lunchtime break, it is time to search for salt. Salt, salt, salt. The whole world seems to want it, need it. Because there is none. None in the shops, none at the agricultural co- operatives, none anywhere.

And the girl has a very long, curvy driveway which had been snowed on, rained on, snowed on again, frozen, thawed, frozen again, until the curves have now become a perfect Olympic Quality ice skating ring. Meaning the girl's car remains at the entry, and she has to schlep her groceries and her dog's biscuits up the quarter mile icy drive by foot. Meaning that there is not a propane delivery truck on the planet which could come and fill the almost empty tank. Meaning that the two falls she and her loved one had already taken have been duly noted with large black and blue spots on their backsides.

Salt. She. Needs. Salt. So she sets out, with her dog, on a salt finding mission.

But the only thing left in the entire city are water softening tablets. That's right -- those one inch by one inch tablets you put in your water softening machine.

The man behind the counter says, well, if I were you I would take them.

After all, The Snow Of The Century is coming next week.

The girl recoils in fear. She thought the Snow Of The Century Had Already Come And Gone.

So she buys 150 kilograms, that would be 330 pounds, of water softening tablets.

Her dog, patiently waiting in the car, is very hopeful that after this ridiculous drive around town, he would get a nice long walk out of the girl.

The girl pulls into her driveway, as far as she could go, and, still dressed up from her salt shopping spree (yes she got dressed up for salt, she has little other occasion to dress up for at the moment), starts ripping open the 50 pound bags of water softening tablets and spreading them all over the Olympic Quality Ice Skating Corner. She then tries to back her car back out to the street to allow the tablets to melt the ice. And promptly slides into a three foot snow drift.

A little steamed, she climbs up the hill to the house and puts on her rubber boots, insulated jacket and pulls out her ice pick and two snow shovels and heads back down the driveway.

The dog is waiting at the car, thinking the walk HAS to be coming now.

Oh no. She starts picking and digging, slipping and sliding, shoveling and swearing, sweating and picking some more. Back and forth, the smell of clutch. Mud from the ice from the water softener tablets.

But car does not budge. The unique combination of slush, mud, snow, ice and water softening tablets make a soup which the car cannot escape. She feels a pinch in her back. It's time to stop. She looks at the dog, who is thinking, it's now or never. Slowly she walks up to the house. He follows, dejected. As a treat, she makes him an extra large portion of hamburger for dinner, and recalls fondly, when lovely Amanda told her that the pact the girl had made with herself not to drink wine during the week was never going to work, and breaks open a bottle of Barolo.

And toasts the upcoming Snow Of The Century, the Almost Empty Gas Tank, and the Stuck Car From Hell.

Regardless what happens tomorrow, the girl resolves that the dog is going to get an extra long walk. Absolutely.