WINTER WOES

It's official -- I hate winter and snow and cold and everything that goes with it.

We just got walloped by an early winter blizzard and right now there are piles and piles of the white stuff around, and the winds are howling.


It took me two hours to free my Miata from the Great Wall of Snow that the department of public works had built around the perimeter of where the car was parked. Let's not talk about the icing on the cake, more accurately the other ten or so inches of snow that were attached to the roof, trunk and hood areas. 


Last night two neighbors struggled to get their truck off the street and parked safely. It took them over an hour.

Meanwhile I'm on Facebook and keep reading a bunch of these cute statements by the Abominable Snow People who see all of this as a winter wonderland in their addled minds.


Really. You people are nuts. Who in hell wants to be cold? This is your concept of fun?


The wind chill is low enough so that first thing that happens when you walk outside is your eyes widen in shock and they stay frozen that way. No matter how many layers of clothing you pile on, your shoulders instinctively rise up in surprise, where they stay until the spring thaw.


Let's not talk about the sheer joy of trudging along over the snow covered streets, the pleasure that only can be experienced when a clod of it breaks off an overhead tree branch and hits you on the head.  And, oh, yes, the sensation of achievement when you finally manage to see your car under the snow. Gotta love that.

Give me warm sand, a blue sky, palm trees swaying in the breeze and a gorgeous turquoise ocean in which to dip my feet. 


Whenever you speak to New Englanders they always give you that baloney about how much they like the seasons. They couldn't imagine life without the winter, they claim.


And yet these are the very same people who go completely bananas on the first warm spring day,  yelping like howler monkeys and throwing on shorts and t-shirts.


By the way, when I finally do move to the Caribbean, it won't surprise me that the first persons who will want to visit are the aforementioned maniacs who think blizzards are fun. 


Bet ya on this one.


Amen, and pass the mustard.

HATING HATHEAD

Thanks in part to the ridiculously low temperatures this morning, I opted to wear a hat.

Now mind you it's a pretty stylish hat, a black, loosely knitted cap with fur all around the edge for a dash of something something. If I ever go to Moscow, I'll definitely wear it and go by the name Natasha. That's what someone at work was calling me.

The downside of this "I wanna be a fashionista winter statement" was that soon as I took the blasted thing off, my hair stood up on end and, well, looked like most cats do when they freak themselves out over something or other.

So in order to avoid looking like a Glamour Don't (you know, those pictures in the magazine in which a woman wearing something totally atrocious has a large black bar across her face so nobody recognizes her) I ended up putting the hat back on while I sat down to work.

Except I couldn't stand it. Not for longer than say, five minutes at a stretch.

I hate putting ANYTHING on my head. I hate headsets, headphones, wigs, fake hair pieces, hats that are too tight. Garrottes, that's what these items remind me of, and my scalp will agree.

Current fashions, however, are not on my side. I can't tell you how many people I see comfortably wearing a baseball cap or a woolen hat indoors for the duration of the day, even in sometimes hot weather. It makes no sense to me.

I went out with someone who used to wear baseball caps year round, a curiousity considering he had a marvelous head of hair that most men would have showed off proudly. But then again, the whole thing was doomed from the start -- turns out there wasn't much underneath that hair except a hamster going around in a wheel. But that's another story.

Amen, and pass the mustard.