Yesterday I ventured out to walk beyond the neighborhood. The big snow was more than a week ago, so I felt confident that most icy patches would be gone.

I was wrong. Icy patches were plentiful on the walk I took around Lake Anne, snow packed and hardened into slickness. But there was plenty of pavement, too, enough to make me continue.

Enter the mincing step. This is when you walk so slowly and gingerly that an observer might think you weren’t moving at all. This is when you throw caution aside and hobble unabashedly like a little old lady.

This is what I did yesterday, did it several times in fact. On the minus side, I walked so slowly that my toes felt like lumps of ice. On the plus side, I didn’t fall. An excellent tradeoff, I think.