Thoughts on my least favourite season...

Winter sucks.  I guess you can tell I don't skate, ski, snowboard, snowshoe or any of the other sports and pastimes that make some people I know actually look forward to this time of year.  Mind you, I have done some of these things in the long past, but not anymore.  Maybe if I did, I wouldn't be so grumpy in the winter.

In this part of the world we've been having a brutal, temperamental winter, and my mood has been fluctuating right along with the weather.  This morning, not for the first time in the last month, I got bundled up to walk to yoga class, which takes almost 25 minutes on a good day.  I was outside for three minutes and realised there was no way I could tolerate the entire walk there.  So I turned around and came home.  I've missed a lot of yoga classes in the last six weeks, and that makes me even grumpier.  And it's all been because of cold and snow and ice and all that other stuff that makes walking unpleasant, if not downright dangerous.  I've come close to falling a number of times on icy sidewalks.
The irony of all this is that I've been worried for a number of years now that climate change has robbed these here parts of a proper winter.  Unduly mild winters set me to fretting about rising Arctic waters and drowning polar bears.  Then we finally get a good old-fashioned winter, the kind I remember as a kid, and it denies me the pleasures of walking and yoga that I enjoy in my not-that-old-yet age.  So here I am, missing out on yet another yoga class and complaining about it on my little web.
Okay.  I'm still feeling out of sorts, but not as much.  Sometimes talking things out with my legion of loyal followers accompanied by a hot blast of caffeine soothes my shattered nerves.  So I'm going to pour myself another cup of coffee and make an appointment with the vet for my little Lulu, who has licked off all the fur on her belly, legs and flanks.  Maybe that's her way of complaining about the weather, too.  Anyway, she looks the way I feel, and it ain't pretty.

Aye me! Now I'm cranking myself up again.  So I guess I better go.  Although I haven't finished complaining, it must be deadly for you fab folk out there to have to read about it.
Oh! Wait!  I just thought of something positive to say about winter in the true north strong and freezing.  It reminds me that Nature rules, and so I respect her moods and obey her commands, even if I don't like them.  (Simple stuff like wear a hat, shovel the snow, don't walk on thin ice.)  If I didn't I'd be even more miserable.
Mother Nature has the power.  And as far as I'm concerned, that's cool.  Or maybe I should say c-c-cold.
- G.P.