Wintertime vocabulary lesson for the masses.

I realize that not all of the readers here live in the cold, white north.  We have a different vocabulary up here during the winter.  Here are some words/phrases you may here:

1.  I've got to snap my blades.  That means that if you are really good at it, you can drive down the road, reach out your window and grab hold of a moving windshield wiper blade while in motion.  You need to do this to "snap" the ice off the blade to make it so that it can start clearing ice, road sludge, salty water and whatnot from your windshield.

2.  Drifts.  We're not talking about hints that people are dropping.  Oh no.  We're talking about swirling measurements of snow that collect and block the worse possible places.

3.  Beet juice.  Where I live, they use a beet juice cocktail on winter roads for ice treatment.  No, we don't drink it.  Surprisingly, it doesn't turn the cars pink or purple like I thought.  Well, I suppose it is hard to tell under all of the gray road gunk.

4.  Parking lot sludge.  Gray and black semi-frozen matter that is a result of salt melting and driving over ice and snow.  It will ruin pants.  When you walk through it, you end up with a stripe of gunk all the way up the back of your legs.  Nice.

5.  Give my car a brush, please.  No, I don't drive the dog mobile from Dumb and Dumber.  Brushing a car is simply taking the lovely snow brush and brushing the snow off the windows and lights.  My husband usually brushes my car off, but this morning, I was on my own.  :(

6.  Snowman snow.  Snow isn't just snow.  There are different degrees of snow and just because you have it doesn't mean that you can make a snowball or snow person out of it.  The warmer it is, the more the snow sticks.  The colder it is, the fluffier it is.

7.  Car blanket.  You don't have this to tuck your car in.  You have this in case you end up in a horrible traffic jam because someone decided to stomp on their brakes or because your car failed to cooperate.  A nice, toasty blanket in your car may never be used.  In the winter up north, it is a necessity, though.

I know that I'm forgetting a ton of things here.  Feel free to keep adding to the list.  :)