letter to winter

Dear Winter,

I hate you. I think you suck, but not for the reasons you expect. I can bear the snow and the bad weather. It is something that I have come to understand and I can take precautions to make these things manageable. I can take a vacation day when you make the roads too treacherous to navigate and I can wear layer upon layer of clothing, turning me into an asexually rounded yeti. At least these things have advantages: I can stay home from work or avoid being hit on by unwanted suitors.

Rather, I hate you because of the way you make me feel. You make me numb in mind and body. You are accompanied by grey skies and gloom. You are as temperamental as a schizophrenic: one minute spewing snow from your steely clouds, the next firing lightning bolts and ice down from the heavens. If I were to admire anyone for anything, it would be for consistency in their work...of this you exhibit nothing but inconsistency. I hate that the meteorologists are incompetent at predicting your "episodes" and that there is no warning for your outbursts. You make me shiver with a death-like coldness that begins in the tip of my nose and runs through my body with the intensity of the first teenage "love" pangs. You make my boyfriend contort his body into a protective stance each time I come near him with my freezing "ice claws." You make me wish I hadn't been ordered to give up caffeine, and thus give up coffee and hot chocolate that used to warm my numbness. You make my bank account shrivel, but stretch at the same time, because of increasing fuel costs both for my car and to heat my house. You make the dog stand as though she were a tripod while trying to relieve herself in the bitter temperatures. You make me wish for warmer climates and a work-from-home job allowing me to be a shut-in and avoid you altogether. You make me hate the poets who have thought you worthy of putting pen to paper, the photographers who capture the first frost-covered mornings before the weight of your unsteady yet unrelenting fist has smashed upon the world, crushing out all hope and happiness. You make me curse the winter sport fanatics for wishing you would last longer, thus canceling out my own wishes that you'll pack up your shit and leave already. You make me yearn for spring, despite the odor of cow feces that will undoubtedly fill the air. You make me spend my time wishing for the future instead of enjoying the present, thus stealing precious time from my life (all the while realizing that this act is my own damned fault, for which I hate you even more).

Did I mention that I hate you, Winter. I do. From the bottom of my frozen, clicking heart.

Sincerely,
Trish T.

midwest

For all of my friends who have moved onward and outward from the Midwest, you are much smarter than I. I am pretty sure that half of my ass is still frozen to the leather seat in my car, thanks to the subzero wind chill of nearly -30 degrees. I really ought to get a seat cover.

For those of you who still suffer at the hands of Jack Frost (a man who, in my opinion, should be strung up by his balls, drenched with boiling water and left in the wintry hell he has created), you know my pain.

I doubt that I'll be moving anytime soon, but I am mulling over the possibility of branching out even farther from the nest. If I could afford a plane ticket home in the case of an emergency, I would feel more comfortable leaving the Midwest for places without 8 months of winter. I'm not sure that the man will ever leave WI again, but it may be time to plant the seed in his mind. A seed that will probably not break ground any time in this decade.

Don't get me wrong. There are many things I love about Wisconsin. (Minnesota, though, is a different story and I wouldn't move back there even if someone threatened to cut off all of my fingers with a grapefruit spoon.)

• I love the spring, summer, and fall.
• Trees.
• It is beautiful here.
• I live within 15 minutes of the capitol, but still live in the "country."
• I am close, but not too close, to family.
• There are many things to do, if I were to choose to do them.
• Cheese. Need I say more?

I hate the winter with a passion though. A passion strong enough to uproot me if we have to go through multiple winters like this one. I may be one of the very few people hoping for global warming (or at least its effect on winter in WI).