This weather really is enough to make you want to shoot 6 holes in your freezer, and it’s only mid-December.
I’m “minding” the cold this year more than ever before, and it’s got to be a combination of age and PTSD following last year’s absolute disaster here on Cape Cod, when we were battered by a set of storms that left 100 inches of snow.
What’s good about the cold, if anything? Well, I’m able to fit a little better into my jeans, maybe because I’ve got the thermostat so low that I’m constantly burning blubber to stay at 98.6.
This has nothing to do with vanity, mind you: utility costs are skyrocketing so high, who wants to buy new clothes if you don’t have to.
What else is “good”? Well, for anyone who’s an atmospheric conditions junkie, this month has been a mind feast. The day of the micro-blizzard, I was standing on my porch during the pre-storm clam, and literally watched the front barrel in, cyclonic motion and all.
I’m not saying I saw a tornado, but when you see the clouds circulating in a great, counter-clockwise direction (due to the coriolis force, a product of the spinning of the earth), then you know this is not a “normal” storm.
Third “good”: seeing animal tracks. The light snows we’ve gotten have been almost as effective as a security camera in recording who has been stomping around the yard and exactly where they went. I found what looked like cat paw prints on the front stairs up to the door; squirrel prints; and some kind of canine, but leading from the BACK of the yard to the street, thus providing anecdotal support to the theory that my yard is on a coyote run.
Fourth “good”: heroic stories, especially the kind traded among strangers at store checkouts, for instance. I took a couple of hours off to do some errands last weekend, and traveled down Cape through Chatham and Brewster, thus witnessing first hand the devastating effect of the winds on dozens of gigantic trees that had been ripped up by the roots. And these weren’t wimpy pines, but very old oaks many feet in diameter.
Fifth “good”: procrastination is its own reward when road conditions are bad. No excuses are needed in the exercise of common sense.
On that note, it’s a blessing at times like these to be a little child, too inexperienced to truly grasp the consequences of real peril while one is being transported in the worst possible conditions. Rather, to children, it’s a lark, and God bless their little selves for it.