Seven Red

I swore I’d never post about the weather. Swore it. Granted, my long-winded ruminations on mediocre Jodie Foster flicks aren’t exactly burning up the Internets, but the weather? No!

But this is really getting out of hand. It doesn’t end. There’s no let up. I counted eight consecutive days that I had to wipe the car down in the morning before bringing babygirl to daycare. This morning, I looked out the window, saw that the car was clear, and just about had a fainting spell. Thirty five degrees? Where’s my sun block? I heard some scuttlebutt that it was 70 degrees in New York a few days ago. Meanwhile, when we get up at 6 am, it’s always “The temperature is -2 at O’Hare, and that’ll feel like -18 with the windchill.” I don’t even bother with the “Did she say minus?” anymore.

Then it went from bad to worse. she says that I always complain about the weather in the winter, but I never remember until the next winter. Then I do this whole “It’s not so bad” thing for a couple of weeks until I start complaining again. That’s probably true. I don’t remember. But the other day I truly lost my shit. Once again, I had to wade through a river of slush to wipe the car down again. There’s a vague qualitative difference between “wiping down” and “digging out.” This particular morning was still on the wipe down side of that line, but just barely. So I open up the car, start the engine and get the rear window burners going, then get to wiping. It’s a solitary task, because she stays upstairs trying to pile 30 layers of clothes on babygirl while I’m doing this. A lot goes through your mind when you when you’re brushing snow off a car in the dim morning light. A man could go mad out in that cold, alone.  So, like, anyway, I finally get done, and hop in the car. What? It was so cold that the inside of the windshield was frozen over. I start scraping away with the scraper, creating enough chips of ice on the dashboard to make a giant fucking sno-cone, but the inside of a windshield isn’t built like the outside, so scraping doesn’t really work that well. Just then, she arrives to strap in babygirl, and I am losing it. I start driving off even though I can’t really see out of the front windshield. I’m cursing up a storm, and babygirl is going “Daddy? Daddy?” What a commotion! I’m a horrible person.

Random babygirl pic to soften effect of insane weather rant.

I used to think that these people who would claim to get depressed in the winter were just weak. But I think it’s real now. I’m either lethargic or shaking my fist at the sky – and not just metaphorically. It was cold in Pennsylvania, sure. And I grew up in New York, which isn’t exactly a tropical paradise from October to March. Yeah. But there are breaks. Winter comes in waves. You have a bad spell for a few days, then it gets reasonable again. Here, it is relentless. If you get a break, it lasts a few morning hours. Two weeks ago, it got up to 45, then the temperature dropped 10 degrees in four minutes. What the fuck is that? It takes me half an hour to get a beer cold in the freezer. By the time I left my class at 9pm, it was 10 degrees with blustery little blades of snow and ice whipping around the El platform generally, and with a seemingly malicious intensity around the exposed areas of my face. I see how it is now. Apart from the white noise in my line of vision, I remember only a jaw-clenching rage. I’m mad at the weather, which is pretty weird and pathetic, you ask me. But it doesn’t stop.

I know. Stop complaining. Buck up. There you are up in your beautiful city whining about some cold and snow. But, Jeez-us. Make it stop for two-day stretch.

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