Winter Blows

Sometimes I get irritated when we're referred to as the Tundra, MinneSNOWta or MinneICEpolis.  I think...we have REALLY hot summers (we do!) and minus the mosquitos, gnats and horseflies...summer in MN is blissful.

Today...good grief...I live in MinneICEpolis, MinneSNOWta.  (disclaimer:  technically I'm in a Minneapolis suburb but you get the drift). 

Days like these..the sun is shining, the snow is beautiful and everything is sparkly and you go outside and WHAM!!!  Your boogers freeze, you can't breathe, your fingers feel close to falling off in minutes, your eyeballs explode from the outside glow of white snow and bright sunshine and you're suddenly blinded..and it's not nearly as pretty anymore.  You frantically escape to your car and sit there for 10 minutes with it on until the ice crystals on your windshield get slighty warm enough to wipe away, thus creating streaks that you try to see through while making yourself as small as possible hunched over your steering wheel. 

And you think, "WTF?!?!?!"  (you all know what that means..I literally think W..T..F..as in the letters.  Yes..I text too much). 

I was born and raised here and every year I dread winter.  I was born in January..thus making me a winter baby even from birth (Aquarius..yes still, but I'm thinking Water Bearer should have been coined Ice Bearer).  You would THINK I would ski, skate, snowmobile..all the typical winter activites that start with S.  And I have skiied (not well), skated (used to be pretty good..not so much anymore...maybe it's my skates, though) and snowmobiled (periodically yes..but only if I can drive my own snowmobile.  I'm not a good passenger.  Too slippery in a snowsuit/pants on a vinyl seat) but do I love any of them??? 

No. 

I love water. I love boating.  I love swimming.  I love floating in the middle of a lake on a hot summer day with a cold drink.  I love bbq's.  I love sitting on my deck in the evening.  I love bonfires at night. 

I don't love cold and I don't love winter.  Case in point #1:  I have 12 swimsuits, and only one pair of good mittens that my daughter wears to school every day, thus leaving me a cotton pair of gloves that really do nothing.  Case in point #2:  Im running around barefoot on the first 50 degree day, but I don't carry a snowscraper in my card, thus leaving me to use a credit card to pick away the ice on my windshield.  As my daughters would say...DER!

I'm generally a pretty happy content person, and I still am in the winter mostly, but this winter..wow, this winter is like winters of old.  We've been spoiled the past few years but not this winter.  As of now, we have more snow right now..January 18..then we did all of last winter.  And we still have at LEAST two months left.  That thought alone depresses me.  I think by February, I may kill for a warm weather vacation (which unfortunately, is not in the cards this year).  I may resort to tanning and highlighting my hair (oh shush people...I'll spray tan if it will make you feel better).  I've been known to sit down in the aisle at Target that has the suntan lotion to just sit there and smell it (true story...the girls and I did that last year).  I'll fire up the grill (after digging a path to it) and grill burgers just to get the summer smell.  I'll look at pictures of summer and yearn wistfully for them, as if they are gone forever (which I know they're not, but on days like today..man do they seem far away). 

So if anyone would like to bestow on me say...oh..I don't know...a trip to some tropical paradise that will serve me a drink with an umbrella by a cute cabana boy..well, I wouldn't object to it.  You wouldn't have to twist my arm and I'd smile my most delightful smile, look at you straight in the eye with an earnestness you may never see again and say, "Oh THANK YOU!  Thank you SO much.  I'd be delighted to go."

But until then...I'll try to find the beauty of winter....but probably from inside where it's warm.