A storm. “Isn’t it just a blizzard?” asked a friend who’s seen a few more New England winters than I have.

No, they’re bomb cyclones. And they’ve got names now too. I think this one is Kevin or some shit.

Worse, weather people now refer to the process of a storm rapidly gaining strength as bomb-o-genesis, which in my view sounds more like a rock band, a decadent dessert, or a sex toy.

WTF Number 1: What’s with littering masks people? Walk in any direction for a small distance around here and you’re bound to encounter 5-6-7 discarded masks. WTF?

WTF Number 2: I’ve been taking a statin for a number of years and I had to learn about the perils of grapefruit juice from a blogging friend in Maine? WTF doctors? (Thanks for the heads up, Joanne).

WTF Number 3: Local news coverage about safety offered this tip should you fall through the ice: “Use your ice pick and rope to pull yourself out.” WHAT. THE. FUCK?

We walked around Crystal Lake this morning. K wanted to make part of the circuit on the ice but I was too nervous, especially after hearing eerie boing-pong sounds coming from under the ice. Plus, I left my ice pick and rope at home.

Now for my tribe comment — the Irish tribe in case you’re wondering (Ancestry puts me at 98%). It’s not often that I sing out “that’s my tribe” with head held high.

Case in point, the last time I flew home from LA, three guys from Southie sitting in the row behind me spent the final hour of the flight both refusing to wear their masks properly (despite repeated requests from airline staff) and arguing about who was driving whom home. “That’s my tribe,” I thought wearily.

But twice recently watching Maddow’s coverage of stubborn and valiant fisherfolk from County Cork, I called out, “That’s my tribe!” County Cork is even where my maternal grandmother hails from.

If you haven’t heard the story, Russia is planning military exercises off the southwest coast of Ireland. The fishermen of that area intend to head their way and “fish as usual, as is their right.” In a season of handwringing over Russian aggression, I love this scrappy and pugnacious response. And true to the Irish penchant for understatement, the daring offensive is being framed as being about the mackerel and all.

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Short version of WTF Number 4 is the radical right. I put it at the end here so you can skip it if you want but I include it as testimony. It all is so unbelievable.

WTF Number 4: Green M&M’s are no longer sexy enough for Tucker Carlson? Newt Gingrich has crawled out from whatever rock he’s been hiding under to do a Giuliani impression of “lock them up?” Susan Collins is so glad there will be time to deliberate over the next SCOTUS pick since it is such an incredibly important decision? McConnell asks that the Democrats not pick someone “radical” (um, hello Handmaid? Hello beer-lauding blackout-Justice who has recently extolled the SCOTUS previously overturning precedent while failing to mention, of course, that each of those previous times was to expand rights, not take them away?)