Cold, white, and ugly
There were a lot of reasons I was excited to move to Minnesota. Winter wasn't one of them. I've always hated winter -- whether it's the half-assed Oklahoma one characterized by freak ice storms and sunny, 70 degree weekends or the predictably bleak, consistently cold Minnesota one doesn't appear to matter.
It's cold here. Not uniformly cold, though. We get huge temperature swings like I was used to at home, but a swing from -11F to 20F still leaves you at "cold". It feels a lot warmer -- and that's great -- but it doesn't alleviate the need for multiple layers and excessive outerwear.
Clothes are my least favorite thing about winter. I hate itchy clothes. I hate long sleeves. I hate socks (but especially thick, loose, or long socks). I hate wearing closed-toe shoes. I hate gloves that leave me unable to manipulate objects like door knobs and keys. The worst thing about winter is that you have to wear a lot of clothes, and all of them seem to fall into one of these categories. I'm so bundled up to leave my house lately that I can't easily turn to check my blind spots while driving. Add the hazard of the glaringly bright northern sun (which seems to be setting all afternoon) and Minnesotans who can't merge and driving becomes downright frightening.
The really terrible thing about winter that isn't related to clothes is the snow. It's momentarily pretty white it's falling, but then it's all over everything. It's on every surface, and people drive on it before the plows come by. It turns into a deadly ice crust, trampled on for weeks. It's black and grey and brown from road sludge and mud tracked across it or flung from puddles by passing cars, whose parking and access become complicated by the huge mounds of slow left by plows in the streets and on the curbs. It's yellow everywhere a dog has peed (which is way more places than I imagined or would like to know about). It melts and freezes and no one bothers to do anything about it, so that you slip on it incessantly and it takes you twice as long to walk anywhere. This morning, I missed my bus precisely for this reason -- watched it drive right by me as I traversed an enormous puddle+black ice combo twenty feet from the stop. In normal circumstances, I could have run to catch it.
Winter is cold and white and ugly, and I do not like it. Here's hoping this misery passes and makes what "spring" and "summer" they get here twice as sweet.
It's cold here. Not uniformly cold, though. We get huge temperature swings like I was used to at home, but a swing from -11F to 20F still leaves you at "cold". It feels a lot warmer -- and that's great -- but it doesn't alleviate the need for multiple layers and excessive outerwear.
Clothes are my least favorite thing about winter. I hate itchy clothes. I hate long sleeves. I hate socks (but especially thick, loose, or long socks). I hate wearing closed-toe shoes. I hate gloves that leave me unable to manipulate objects like door knobs and keys. The worst thing about winter is that you have to wear a lot of clothes, and all of them seem to fall into one of these categories. I'm so bundled up to leave my house lately that I can't easily turn to check my blind spots while driving. Add the hazard of the glaringly bright northern sun (which seems to be setting all afternoon) and Minnesotans who can't merge and driving becomes downright frightening.
The really terrible thing about winter that isn't related to clothes is the snow. It's momentarily pretty white it's falling, but then it's all over everything. It's on every surface, and people drive on it before the plows come by. It turns into a deadly ice crust, trampled on for weeks. It's black and grey and brown from road sludge and mud tracked across it or flung from puddles by passing cars, whose parking and access become complicated by the huge mounds of slow left by plows in the streets and on the curbs. It's yellow everywhere a dog has peed (which is way more places than I imagined or would like to know about). It melts and freezes and no one bothers to do anything about it, so that you slip on it incessantly and it takes you twice as long to walk anywhere. This morning, I missed my bus precisely for this reason -- watched it drive right by me as I traversed an enormous puddle+black ice combo twenty feet from the stop. In normal circumstances, I could have run to catch it.
Winter is cold and white and ugly, and I do not like it. Here's hoping this misery passes and makes what "spring" and "summer" they get here twice as sweet.
This is a rather accurate description of the winters I was used to before coming to Oklahoma. I want to move back to somewhere where winters are warmer and nicer than this.
ReplyDeleteAnd I do feel your pain---it's by no means pleasant (unless you spend enough time tolerating it to come to turns with this state of events and find a certain liking to it).