Winter in New England Can Suck...

Sometimes I can't fathom why I came further north for graduate school, and then decided to stay and settle here. I guess it is because the summer's can be so fantastically nice that it lulls you into a false sense of security about the long, hard slog that is a New England winter.

I hate snow. I don't have a clear idea in my mind when I started hating snow, but I definitely do. As a child, of course, I loved it. It was fun, and it often meant a day off from school - a free play day out in this rare and wonderful stuff.

I never understood why my parents and folks older than me were always stressed out when it snowed. How could you not like this stuff? Now I know. When you are older, snow ceases to be fun, and is just another one of those things that makes your life more difficult. Most adults have plenty of other things that make their lives difficult enough without Mother Nature throwing in her two cents.

So now, instead of going out and having fun in the snow, building a snowman, sledding, having a snowball fight, I worry about shoveling all of it, getting it off of the car, and then praying that neither me nor someone else on the road is having a bad karma day and ends up totaling said car. No wonder my parents always dreaded the snow. It created a lot of extra work for them.

I have a feeling though, snow is one of those things you enjoys in cycles. When you are a kid, snow is great. When you are an early adult, it's just a pain in the ass. Then you have kids of your own, and it becomes fun again, because you get to experience it through your children. Then of course, your kids grow up and it re-becomes a pain in the ass.

For me, it's definitely in the 'pain in the ass' phase right now...