I am trying to live this year in gratitude for my many blessings. With that in mind, I send up to the powers that be my thanks for my snug home, which has been cosy and safe since the day I moved in. I am grateful for my warm outside clothes, including the perfect custom toque knitted by Luanne for Christmas: it’s the first winter hat that actually goes over my hair, and still manages to cover my forehead and neck, too. I’m also grateful for the sweet man who has faithfully shoveled all my snow this winter, despite having his own house to worry about. I realize that I am so much better off than many in this city who would give a toe or three for the blessings I have.

I am done with winter, however. I don’t feel like winter and I can spend any more time together without me absolutely losing my mind. I think the worst part of it is the unpredictability of this winter. It has been, by turns, well above and well below the normal average temperature for a given week, sometimes on consecutive days. One day, the weather is beautiful and the sun is shining like that 150 watt bulb I bought like accident that made my kitchen feel like an operating room (except for the cat hair tumbleweed in the corner). The next day, it’s grey outside, and so freaking cold that my clothes take twice as long in the dryer.

Driving has not been fun this winter. I have been lucky that most of my trips have been around the city, and that I haven’t been forced to drive on treacherous highways at high speed. Nor have I been forced to drive on the highway at timid old lady speeds due to blinding snow and unpredictable black ice while losers in big pickups inevitably zing by me. Even bopping around town has been miserable though, particularly on the side streets, where even with winter tires and all-wheel drive have been powerless to prevent my poor little truck from being a cute green pinball between the foot-deep ruts. The city finally did plow the avenue in front of my house, so I can drive more or less in a straight line to the main artery that connects me to work and the library. The pile of broken up, grimy ice chunks that has closed up my front sidewalk’s connection to the street is a mountain taller than my belly button. The three lane road I take to school was a 2.2 lane road for most of January and February, and unfortunately, the 0.2 lane is the only one that lets me turn in the direction I need.

My five foot high back yard fence is currently a fourteen inch high back yard fence. Luckily for me, my dog isn’t adventurous enough (yet) to realize that he could hop over it and go visiting around the neighbourhood. Also, luckily for all of us, he was neutered in December and really wouldn’t know what to do with himself, even if he did escape. There is also no more room to pile snow from the driveway, meaning that if we get another big dump of snow, I’ll either have to rent a flamethrower to melt down some of the drifts, or start bringing the snow in one bucket at a time to melt in the bathtub.

I have bad mould allergies, so every time we get a couple of melty days (three separate stretches, now), I get sniffly, sneezy, coughy, weezy, and otherwise disgusting in every mucousy sense of the word. Yes, I realize I made up at least three words in that last sentence. Sometimes, there are no existing words in the English language to encompass my frustration, and I need to branch out. Anyway, I welcome the warm days, which are such a beautiful break from the frigid cold, but the three thaws we’ve had so far have turned me into a very icky person. sigh.

I am sick of winter. As far as I’m concerned, winter can pack his bags and disappear from my life, because this is over like Happy Days. Winter, make like a baby and head out. We can start fresh again next year, when all this has faded a bit from my memory.