December 06th, 2017

There will be none of this here.  I mean it's a cute photo and all but no thank you.

​I'm ambivalent about snow.  On the one hand it's pretty.  There is no getting around it. When I've lived in cold and snowy places, winter looks like, well, winter.  Christmas looks just like all of the posters and movies say it should.  Snow is silent when it falls and it's a special kind of quiet.  I could always tell, even without looking out the window when it was snowing.  And I loved seeing the animal tracks in the snow.  All the creatures that I never knew (but always suspected) were lurking about our yard were suddenly evident.  Moonlight on a snow is mysterious and deep, sunlight on snow sparkles like glitter.  Sunset is beautiful on everything but sunrise is the time that snow is the most magical.

As a kid snow meant frolic!  Sledding, snowman building, fort constructing, igloo making, snowball creating fun.  The cold pinked our cheeks and made our noses run but kids don't care.  We were bundled into so many layers that we could barely move but our knitted mittens, once wet with snow melted from the heat of our bodies contributed to numb fingers.  Who could forget struggling to get rubber galoshes on over our shoes while dressing to go out to play and working equally hard to remove them later. I can still remember the smell of the air as I breathed in that cold through the scarf wound 'round my neck a zillion or so times.  It is unlike any other fragrance.  To say nothing of the scent of wet mittens drying on a radiator.

On the other hand, it's cold.  Snow is cold. Damned cold. And wet. Really wet.  And heavy.  So heavy.  I do not miss shoveling.  I suppose if I were pressed to say something positive about it I could say that shoveling is good exercise and it is.  But no thank you.  There are other warmer and drier ways to exercise. 

​And snow slippery.  That is the absolute worst part for me.  Slippery to walk on, slippery to drive on. Especially when the snow melted a wee bit during the day and then froze again over night so now instead of driving on snow, which is bad enough, now the driving is on ice.  Not fun.  Or the sneaky ice which forms under the snow so you don't even know it's there. Or the even sneakier non-shiny ice that they call black ice so the road appears to be perfectly normal and dry but is in fact an ice slick just waiting to slide you off into the nearest tree.  No I do not miss that one bit.

​So I confess that a nostalgic part of me does miss the idea of a white Christmas.  But then I watch the news and see the traffic cams and I get over it.

​The weather guys this morning were talking about a cold front that is moving south so we should finally see some cooler temperatures here.  It's been in the high 70's.  I think the highs over the next week should be low 60's and maybe even the high 50's!  For here that is nippy.  I know it will be even colder for anyone North of us and if there is any precipitation included with their dip in temps, it could mean cold rain, sleet, snow or the dreaded ice.  My condolences.