No disrespect to Wilson Bentley and his lovely snowflake images, but I've had just about enough of the white stuff for the year. Possibly next year, too.
Maybe I'm imagining it, maybe I'm getting old and crotchety, maybe I've been freezing my ass off since I had my son and he (not I) retained all the glorious warmth that used to infuse me all winter long, but it seems like it's been snowing non-stop for months. And not just little dustings, either. We're talking mountains of snow. Rock hard, frozen browning mountains of snow. For you see, the last batch was followed by a lovely rain that crusted the earth and my freshly shoveled driveway into a hard lump of ice - a naturally formed ice skating rink that only yesterday, our first day above freezing in god knows how long, I managed to chip up and eject over the ice mountians and onto my equally frozen lawn.
Now, I'm a happy person. Really. Okay, you'll just have to take my word for it. But winter has lost its appeal. I used to be one of those lunatic New Englanders that relished the very thought of winter. Sledding, skiing, skating, hot chocolate in the front of the fire, cuddling up (preferably naked) under the blankets in a cozy bed. I was loving it. But now an important change has come over me. I am a Home Owner. Those Norman-Rockwellesque imaginings of the joy of winter were based entirely, it turns out, on the fact that my father, stepfather and the dude my condo association paid, were the ones shoveling their asses off all those years.
Now it's me.
Maybe I'm imagining it, maybe I'm getting old and crotchety, maybe I've been freezing my ass off since I had my son and he (not I) retained all the glorious warmth that used to infuse me all winter long, but it seems like it's been snowing non-stop for months. And not just little dustings, either. We're talking mountains of snow. Rock hard, frozen browning mountains of snow. For you see, the last batch was followed by a lovely rain that crusted the earth and my freshly shoveled driveway into a hard lump of ice - a naturally formed ice skating rink that only yesterday, our first day above freezing in god knows how long, I managed to chip up and eject over the ice mountians and onto my equally frozen lawn.
Now, I'm a happy person. Really. Okay, you'll just have to take my word for it. But winter has lost its appeal. I used to be one of those lunatic New Englanders that relished the very thought of winter. Sledding, skiing, skating, hot chocolate in the front of the fire, cuddling up (preferably naked) under the blankets in a cozy bed. I was loving it. But now an important change has come over me. I am a Home Owner. Those Norman-Rockwellesque imaginings of the joy of winter were based entirely, it turns out, on the fact that my father, stepfather and the dude my condo association paid, were the ones shoveling their asses off all those years.
Now it's me.
2 comments:
I am dreaming of...my garden, walking the dog without fearing for my life by wiping out on a sheet of ice, sitting on the deck with a cup of tea and enjoying the birds singing, seeing people in the neighborhood again. It's not the snow that is so bad, it's the isolation. And when you're writing, you need to feel connected to the world instead of your computer all the time. This winter's a ball-buster.
Let me state up front that I have NEVER enjoyed winter. Not one minute of it. So the fact that I've always lived in states with tons of winter snow means I am either highly masochistic, or just plain stupid. Take your pick. I'm not sure which is worse.
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