It looked like a pillow fight in a movie: downy feathers of snow twisting and drifting through the air, with little space between the fluttering flakes. A midday flurry making landfall in heaps and mounds.
Yet it wasn’t too voluminous, this late-winter coating, and instead of pillowy tufts, the following day offers equal parts splash and crunch. Anything beautiful about the snow has thawed into a slurry swamp. Walking the dog, we slalomed around slush and brown puddles resembling polluted ponds. My sneakers got wet.
I love winter. I like the cold. But I can do without snow, which wasn’t true during my salad days of skiing down vertiginous slopes, laughing all the way. Nowadays I’m too reserved to even toboggan, and I am not squatting in one of those saucer sleds for the certainty that I will break my collar bone in a spectacular face plant.
Snow now means shoveling, one of the lowest forms of drudgery, right there with prisoners smashing quarry rocks in old-timey pictures like “I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.” No matter how frigid it is, I sweat piggishly when shoveling snow. I hate sweating. I hate heat. Did I mention I like winter?
But the season will soon cruelly vanish and shorts, a sartorial scandal, will be all the rage. It’s probable more snow will fall before that; March often gets dumped on without mercy. If there was a hill around here, I’d rent some skis. (And probably snap a femur.)
So this is a premature farewell to the fair season, when we abide icy irritants for the relievedly short days, chilly breezes, hot toddies, fashionable outerwear (is anything hipper than a natty scarf?) and indiscriminate cuddling. (About outerwear: I never don gloves or hats in winter. My mammalian blood takes care of the extremities, ears too.)
When another snow day comes this season, I will gripe and groan. But I will also be grateful that it’s still winter. That I can wear a parka with impunity. That I don’t have to attend barbecues and eat outdoors. That bugs and sunshine won’t assail me. And that I can, joyfully, unabashedly, freeze my ass off.
GNASHING. 
Maybe it’s old(er) age. Maybe it’s the blood thinner. Maybe it’s my genes. I just can’t do cold And for some stupid reason, probably the movie A River Runs Through It, I want to live in Montana: like Sean Connery’s executive officer in Hunt For Red October, “I would like to live in Montana.I know what Montana brings come October.
God love you but I yearn for summer. I want to sit on the patio and read on a warm evening and look down at Lexi enjoying the residual warmth of the concrete. I want to have a bratwurst and a beer at a Giants game (yeah I know you don’t dig sports). I want to tend to the ribs for 6 hours and stir up the baked beans in the Dutch oven while sipping on some Maker’s Mark.
I do agree somewhat with your sartorial commentary although my bugaboo is grown up men wearing flip flops to a nice restaurant.
After weeks of deluge I want the f’ing rain to stop. The next person who says with glee that we need the rain is going to get a punch in the nose. Lexi is definitely over it. She looks out the back door sadly and then up at me as if I could turn the water off.
All that said, I would give a lot to see Lexi romp in the snow.
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I take to heart all you say. Wise words they are. We differ a bit on temperature, but not on rain. I dislike the rain too, and I feel for poor Lexi when it comes down. (I kinda feel more for the pups than the peeps). I’m with you wholly with the Maker’s and the grownups with flip flops in fine establishments. I so appreciate you reading and writing back, and look forward to your next blog, Paulie! Give ol’ Lexi a good pet from me.
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We loved this melodical writing. Jim reread it and loved it..your writing gives one so much emotion and visual responses!! Lv!!
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That’s too nice. Thank you for the kind words. And thanks for reading!
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