Cold

You know how when fall comes around and the air gets crisp and you get all excited to pull out your sweaters and get all toasty and warm and that first snow just makes your heart sing because it's beautiful and hooray, crazy as it may sound, winter has arrived?

Winter can go stick its head in a blender. I'm done. DONE. I now have cold hands, cracked heels, and an addiction to flannel sheets. As my dad always says, around this time of year you see old ladies crying at bus stops, possibly with a certain liquor-shaped paper bag in hand. I'm sorry--I try to keep upbeat, but sweet Georgia Brown, snow, cold temps, GO AWAY. March has come in not like a lion but like a cold, messy, frozen, gray, dirty...something. Ech. Thank goodness my birthday's coming up, or else I might go insane or really foolishly Irish it up on St. Patrick's Day. My birthday also marks the day T proposed, so that makes it memorably sweet as well. On the optimistic side (yeah, call me Pollyanna), I never know what my birthday will bring in terms of weather. 25 degrees? 40? 60? So it's exciting (or I pretend it is) not to know.

Thus I will bravely forge on, keeping in mind that one of my favorite and most talented students apparently loved me as a teacher, which makes my month because this girl in many ways is smarter than I am. That will keep me warm, that and watching Penny rush around in what's left of the snow because she is precious and fun and silly. Here you go; here's a great winter picture to make you smile: