Winter? What Winter?...

I took the day off
for a storm that never came
Fucking weathermen


I'm too tired to write a poem today, unfortunately.  That's the best I could do.  Sorry.

For three days now, the local media has been nothing but coverage of this huge Winter storm we were supposed to get yesterday.  Up to a foot of snow was forecast.  It felt too warm for snow to me, but what did I know?  All the meteorologists were saying the same thing:  expect a huge, crippling snowstorm on Wednesday.

I was looking forward to it, honestly.  We've only had two tiny snowfalls this year, adding up to less than two inches, total.  It always felt like Winter was just around the corner, almost here, any day now.  And then, all of a sudden it was March, and the weather was warm and wet and smelling like the beginnings of new life, and I realized that Winter had never really arrived at all.  And that made me sad; I like Winter.  Just last Saturday night, I said to Her, "I wouldn't mind one more, big snowfall."  And now it seemed that just a few days later, Mother Nature was granting my wish.  So we prepared to take the day off work and hunker down together to have a relaxing, romantic snow-day.

But it never happened.  Twelve hours after the snow started to fall, we had about two inches on the roofs of houses, but that's it.  It wasn't even sticking to the parked cars, much less the sidewalks, much less the roads.  But the forecasters were still saying to expect up to ten inches in our area before the storm tapered off sometime that night.  And then the snow stopped altogether.  But the forecast didn't change.  Then it started to rain, and the little bit of snow that had accumulated on the rooftops began to melt.  But the experts were still saying we would be getting six inches before it was all said and done.  And once all the snow had melted, even the rain stopped.  And then the storm passed over, hours before "they" said it would, and we got a peek of sunset, just before it got dark.

Ever since, the local media has been filled with explanations and excuses for how they could've gotten it so wrong.  The entire region, including large portions of the federal government, shut down yesterday, not because of a crippling snowstorm, but because of the promise of a crippling snowstorm.  A storm that never came.

I was really disappointed.  I still am.  I felt cheated.  I was really looking forward to that experience.  And I feel like I've been waiting for it for years now.  Two years ago we had three major snowstorms, two of them blizzards.  Ten times the amount of snow we usually get.  But we've barely had any snow at all since then; only about three inches total over the last two years.  Which is ten times less than the amount we usually get.  I haven't even gotten my winter coat out of storage the last two Winters; I haven't needed it.  Where the hell has my Winter gone?  When will it come back?  Will it come back?!  I miss it.  I miss the snow.  And I'm tired of waiting for it.  I'm tired of expecting it and never getting it.  I'm tired of Winter disappointments.

Wah wah wah.  Sorry.  Spring's almost here, though, and that's always wonderful.  I'll start trying to look forward to that, instead.

In preparation for Spring, I shaved off my beard and mustache.  I was getting bored with the look, and annoyed by having all that hair on my face.  But now I don't recognize this moon-faced twenty-year old I see in the mirror, and it keeps freaking me out.  I always find that experience rather exhilarating.

Another thing I've been very aware of lately, is that the coming of Spring means hitting my one-year-sober anniversary.  It's less than two months away now.  That's really exciting, for a lot of reasons.  It's also scary for a lot of reasons.

But that topic is a whole post (and probably a few poems) in-and-of-itself, and this one is long enough as it is.  Maybe next time.