Happy New Year/Spring Fakeout

So here we are in 2008! A clean slate! Top of a New Year! New calendars for everyone!

Although I am happy to report that we have had a reasonably festive holiday season, the fact that it was about 61 degrees fahrenheit today was somewhat disconcerting. Last week, we were waking up to minus 3 degrees, and now the whole town looks as if the groundhog has lost his shadow for good. Last week, it was icy and boreal, and I was commenting about how "Norman Rockwell" the whole place looked. Today, my husband went for a run in shorts. Last week, a high of 12 degrees F was de rigeur. Today, piles of dirty snow resembling nothing so much as weeping granite contribute a strangely demoralizing mood. Things can change really fast.

It's certainly not that I haven't ever witnessed a warm spell before. I'm originally from the Washington, D.C. area where, annually, we would average about a week of balmy temperatures in the middle of January and February (and every single year the television weather reporters would claim that it hadn't happened before). Balmy defined as anywhere between 60 and 72 degrees F. However, that was one of the things that made winter in D.C. such a pain. That was a primo time to get sick. You'd just be getting used to the fact that you could walk around town with your jacket open and your hat off, and The North Wind would just sneak up behind you and suddenly smack you upside the head with a Polar Express Sucker Punch. Suddenly, with the alacrity of plunging mercury, you'd realize you were totally underdressed and you should have really brought your gloves with you that morning.

My whole uneasiness about the winter season stems from experiences like the last one. How the heck was I supposed to LIKE winter, much less embrace it if it was going to wantonly take a vacation in February? Getting used to the cold was enough of a chore, and I needed some consistency. To experience the same thing in Vermont was sorta bizarre.

We should have listened more closely to Al Gore.