Here in Kentucky, we root for hopeless causes: Most incarnations of UK Football, the Broncos in Superbowl XVIII, and winter.
Winter? you ask. Indeed!
Usually, Winter is a neutered season. It’s like a buffer between our long, dry falls and our all-too-short wet Springtime. Summer’s the top-dog. Summer’s on the beach, kicking sand in the face of nerdy Winter, breaking his glasses and shooting tequila like a Carrie Underwood song (underage, natch). A “hard” winter here is one big snow of 3" and an average daytime high under 40. “You know, I had to scrape my windows this morning!” we exclaim in disbelief.
Okay, well, it seems clear that Winter’s had it, gotten some ‘Roids, hit the gym, and come packing a Glock 10mm. He’s back, and he’s bad. At this point, I’m beginning to think he’s homicidal.
As I sit here at 6:45am, my birch tree in the back yard genuflects onto my back deck, weighed down by a crapton of ice from last night’s freezing rain. That was Tuesday night; on Sunday night, we got roughly 4" of heavy wet snow. The day before that, it was 60 degrees (“Stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself!”) and the week prior we welcomed the second iteration of the Polar Vortex, with high temperatures in the single digits and most rivers and lakes aside from the Ohio frozen over.
Emblematic: We had a white Thanksgiving this year.
Today makes the Eleventy-first day off school for Joey, meaning he’ll complete his 7th grade term sometime in 2015 provided Dennis Quaid doesn’t walk buy towing Jake Gyllenhall’s emo butt from New York. Not that there’s any consistency–prior to Christmas break, I drove Joey to school in a whiteout that had the bus in front of me break traction on a hill, while yesterday I could’ve gotten him to school with snowshoes better than the Camry. Other days, they’ve called off for the threat of weather that didn’t materialized, or that materialized after 4pm. Lose-Lose if you’re the superintendent.
Rough breakdown of tweets from the last few months:
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November: “Well, isn’t this accumulating snow on Thanksgiving a novelty. I hope we have a White Christmas.”
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December: “Wow, this weather sure is wild. I’m sure this will end soon.”
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January: “So….cold….” Followed by 32,767 pictures of people’s car temp gauges @ -4.
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Sub-genre reserved for Facebook: [Hapless mom] “Someone get these kids out of my house before I murder them.”
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February: Pictures of every vertical or horizontal surface covered in ice.
Thus far, the house is weathering things well, minus the furnace igniter that went out on Monday ($$) and us trying to set the place alight yesterday (Kids do the darndest things).
I’d be just fine with a February warm-up at this point, and an early Spring.