Seasons

I woke up yesterday morning to "flurries".

A quick note to all budding meteorologists, weatherpersons, and aspiring pseudo-scientists: "Flurries" do not impair vision.  Nor do they remain on the ground when common sense says that the ground is too warm for accumulation.  This would be what we call "snow."  It is a bona-fide sign that despite our best efforts, we're going to have to endure another winter in Indiana. Sigh.

I have this love-hate relationship with winter this year.

On the one hand, winter means that time's a-movin' on, and the more time a-moves, the closer I get to bringing my Lovely Fiancee™ up from the steamy swamps of Florida to the heartland of America and into our new home.  Our new home, I might add, that will be built as winter makes its way into spring.  That's always something to look forward to.  Then there's the bowl season and NFL playoffs in winter.  The happiness of Christmas is in winter.  The joy of a New Year is in winter.  The wonder of Groundhog Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and the Feast of the Epiphany are in winter... come on, who doesn't enjoy a good Epiphany party?

On the other hand, my kneejerk reaction is to say fuck you, winter, fuck you, cold, fuck you, High of 27 degrees days,because winter is the cold-ass, snowy, icy, bitterly frigid donkey-prick of seasons.  Everything that is relatively easy and carefree in any other season becomes an absolute pain-in-the-butt chore in winter.  Getting outside to pump gas in winter blows.  Using more gas because you have to spend fifteen minutes warming up the car blows.  Being forced to warm up your car because the ice on your windshield is too thick to see through blows.  Waiting for buses in winter blows.  Shoveling snow from your walk blows.  Salt discoloration on car paint blows.  Being forced to jack up all your utility bills to stay warm blows.  Tracked-in snow on new carpet blows.  Driving on snow blows.  Driving on snow behind Indiana drivers who forget from year to year how to drive on snow blows.  Ice blows.  Even in most drinks.

Okay, to be both fair and honest, there's a lot more hate than love to this year's relationship.

My usual views on Hoosier winters are pretty much the matter of public record.  I was born in a winter, and that was more or less the highlight-- they've progressively taken nosedives from there.  This reached a nice bloody head a couple of years back, when a chance wintertime meeting with a semi-trailer resulted in the untimely death of my Ford Escort (An aside: I loved that car, not just because it was paid off, but enough that I named it "Escort"... just because I am that creative with my names for cars.  To wit, my Suzuki Reno is named "Reno", my Pontiac Sunfire was named "Sunfire", and my Dodge Aries K car was named "K".  I also once owned a very used Chevy Caprice that I named "Deathtrap" which quite by coincidence caught fire on the highway, and a 1980 Ford Country Squire Station Wagon which could not be contained by one true name... and about which hazy legends and frightening rumors still abound.  But I digress, for now.)

So yes, I'm inclined to side with my kneejerk side here, that the only good thing to come out of winter is a fuller appreciation of how much more summer could suck.  Once fall has had its share of us and saunters off for a year, and the skies turn grey, nasty, cold, and ready to spit down frozen bullets of sleet, I generally enter total fuckall mode.  This sort of weather is going to be very fun for my Lovely Fiancee™, and my family-to-be, all of whom thus far has yet to even see real snow (i.e., anything that registers more than a light dusting on the grass).   I imagine that will have a lot of excitement for the first couple minutes: 

Minute 1:  "Oh, look, honey, it's snowing!  It's those really big flakes, too, like they show on the Christmas cards!  And it's happening in October, too!  I never thought that Al Gore was right and that we were going to experience a radical change of seasons, but it's sort of cool that we'll have to make the kids wear coats beneath their Halloween costumes!"

Minute 3:  "It is so pretty out there, everything looks so peaceful!  I'm going to put on my coat and go out there with the kids and just enjoy the moment!"

Minute 3.25:  "Holy fuck Jesus, what is it, ten fucking degrees out there?  Fuck, give me a loaded coffee or something to warm up!  It's pretty, but screw that, I'll watch it from the window."

Minute 25: "Uhm.  It's still falling pretty heavy.  Does it ever stop?  I mean, we can't even see the driveway now."

Minute 45: "Wow.  I can see why you hate that stuff.  I just saw the neighbor skid into a tree three yards over."

Minute 75: "It's still not stopping.  We're going to die, aren't we?  Like the Donner Party, only much worse because we're inside a house and look more pathetic that way."

Hour 3: "What do you mean, only four inches?  We could get more?"

I do feel a little twinge of guilt for pulling my Lovely Fiancee™ and the kids away from their tropical paradise of a home.  But I'm sure that they'll get used to snow-covered evergreens and frozen retention ponds instead of palm trees and balmy sea breezes, and I fully expect that eventually, they will come to look forward to cold weather.  Someday, I am hopeful that we all will enjoy winters in Indiana the same way that I do.

Which is to say, from far away.  Say, the Bahamas.