Today is February 1st.  It was in the mid 40s outside today.  No snow on the ground or clinging to the trees or collecting dirt on the side of the road.  Yesterday it got into the low 50s.  Who do I thank?  I’m going to end up jinxing this, but I love global warming, if this is what we get.  I may not move out West after all, if this keeps up.

I don’t like winter.  I never have and I never will.  I understand why people like it.  They like being cold, sliding down hills, racing across snowy fields, and catching fish from a frozen lake.  I like the outdoors as much as anyone, but I prefer activities that don’t make my testicles scurry towards the warmth of my abdomen after three minutes.  I especially don’t like shoveling snow.  Actually, I hate it.  I have a tweener driveway at my house; not quite big enough for a snow blower, but a bit too large to shovel by hand.  My pride won’t let me get a snow blower because I’m concerned my neighbors will think I don’t have any testicles, yet I bitch and moan for the entire 20 minutes it takes me to shovel our driveway and front walk, just to prove I have said testicles.

By this time last winter, I wanted to slit my wrists and slowly bleed out on top of the 17-foot wall of snow that surrounded my driveway.  The snow was just relentless.  We got hammered with 8-12 inches every night. While that sounds appealing to a certain portion of the population, it wasn’t to me.  Lifting the fresh snow up and over existing snow walls, like I was part of the Night’s Watch protecting my family from the Wildlings, was about as appealing as an afternoon with Ramsay Snow.  By early March, I looked like Theon Greyjoy, minus the castration.  I had cold, sunken eyes, pasty white skin, and the stench of death hung over me.  There looked to be no end in sight, but late April arrived with buds on the trees and my aura slowly warmed to the pleasures of a Southern Tier spring.  The mental scars remain, though, and the slightest mention of a winter weather advisory causes me sheer terror and nearly makes me piss myself.

Thanksgiving and Christmas came and went with nary of snow storm. Now, we’ve made it through January and I haven’t had to shovel my driveway once.  Either luck is on my side this year or I’m about to get hammered.  Winter is coming.  Winter isn’t coming.  Please let it be the latter.  All we have to do is make it to mid-April and we should be in the clear.  Winter isn’t coming, right?  Right?