In the Doldrums

It's a whiteout again at my house and I'm wondering, again, why I live here. Yes, there's no crime and no traffic, but there is snow and a lot of it, every time I turn around it seems. Snow is just plain stupid, and that includes skiing. It piles up everywhere and then hangs around for a really long time, getting dirtier and uglier with each passing day. I'm already sick of it and it's only early February, which in Maine is like the middle of December in other places.

I concede that my unwillingness to "accept" the weather is a clear sign of how far I have to go until I can claim to be enlightened. I am the opposite, if there is such a thing -- I am endarkened. But I'm not the only one who doesn't like it. Today one of the Weather Channel reporters standing out in the storm somewhere in New Hampshire shouted over the howling winds, "Right now the snow is hitting me in the face and it's extremely painful!"

I found his statement hyperbolic. Extremely painful? Really? Snow in the face? I thought back to my 23 hours of labor during  natural childbirth and laughed. Except on the football field, men are such wimps.