Wintertime Blues

                                                                           
I'll come right out and say it. I'm not a fan of winter. I'll go a step further and say that I hate it. I can't stand it. I hate every part of winter. The snow, the cold weather, the wind chills, the short days, the lack of sunlight and I could go on and on. People ask me "why do you live here if you hate 4 months out of 12" I say because I love the other 8 and because no situation can be 100% perfect. Sometimes you have to take the good with the bad. I love the Minnesota golf and theatre scene. I also love the fact that this a consistent stop on any Barenaked Ladies tour. I also love the fact that people are genuinely nice. Winter however, well that's a different story.

This winter has been especially challenging to me. All the years of bad knees and bad dieting and single living have finally caught up with me. I find myself staying up late and waking up tired with my knee pain often beating the alarm clock to wake me up in the morning. Some people hop out of bed. I meander out of bed. It's more of a fall or slither. I even on occasion do this serpentine motion where I move to right out of the covers and then to left for a stretch and then back to the right for some reason and then back to the left to complete the symmetry. I then get ready to walk outside and it's cold and biting or its snowing and wet and you're battling a cold for three months solid. I often work outside and just my luck this winter I have worked outside through every major snownami and after this week of sub-zero temperatures I am ready officially to declare this winter over and move on to spring. The funny thing is that it never used to be this way.

 Some of my fondest childhood memories have occurred in the snow. I started thinking about it this week while talking to my speechies.They are scheduling this night of sledding and hanging out. I remembered that I used to love sledding. When we moved in to the house where I grew up one of the perks was this big hill that bottomed out at this gully right behind our house. It was perfect and it was ours and every year I couldn't wait for the snow to fall so we could go out and sled all day and build ice jumps. I still don't know why we did that because we always built it too high and I always fell out of the sled and would go ass over tea kettle into the snow. I also liked to shovel snow which is my least favorite thing to do now. The day after the 1991 Halloween Blizzard I went out the next day and shoveled driveways and made 50 bucks which turned into my WWF action ring and my Jake "The Snake" Roberts action figure. I also looked forward to winter because it meant basketball season and school snow days and during recess it seemed we got extra time to hang out and play football or soccer. The world just seemed better as a kid in the winter time. A few years back I said I am going to go sledding and I did. I went to the famed Knox Hill in Coon Rapids. Famed only to people in Coon Rapids. I went and climbed the hill and the hill seemed like K2 to me now. It took forever to climb. I took off at the speed of light and hit the jump and fell ass over tea kettle just like the old times except this time I just laid there.

I spent like 2 minutes gathering my thoughts when I heard this kid saying "Hey dude!!!... Your blocking the jump." I got back up and started my Everest-like climb back to the top of the hill. I made my way back down 1 more time before I turned in my sled for the last time. I then spent the next 2 days swallowing humble pie and Extra Strength Tylenol and accepting the fact that I wasn't as good as I once was. I wasn't even as good once as I ever was! My relationship with winter was sealed forever at that point I think. It was like when you're in a relationship when you both mutually realize that you don't love each other anymore. Whatever that spark was that drew you together has gone the way of the dodo bird... but your comfortable and the unknown scares you more than the known so you stay and deal with each other.

I think that's why I'll never leave this place and I'll keep dealing with winter.Maybe one day our relationship can turn back around. Maybe one day I can take the old sled out of mothballs and take one more crack at Knox Hill and show the world that the old guys in the village can still stand on top of the hill and be accounted for.Until then....


Thawing out
Tim