February SNOW

The second I got home from the Triathlon last weekend, it started snowing again. This time, it was the big one. States all across the Northeast and Midwest experienced huge amounts of snowfall. Iowa has the added benefit of being one of the coldest states (no bodies of water or tall buildings or mountains to buffer temperatures, you know...just open prairie), so we had that going on for us, too.

People sometimes ask me what zero degrees feels like. I don't know how to describe it.  It's like...I spend an extra five minutes in the morning putting on long wool socks, gloves, a scarf, a beanie or ear warmers, a knee-length down coat, and slip handwarmers in my pockets... and yet. It never feels like enough.

If there's also windchill, forget about it. I'd sooner stay at home and miss an important class than to feel like my face, ears, and eyes are being sliced off by knives made of ice.

I've been told that people often have fun in snow, but I am not one of them. The snow is currently too powdery-fine to be compressed into snowballs, and there is no way I am going voluntarily to touch something colder than the average freezer. I'm convinced that only two groups of people enjoy playing in snow: children, adults who don't have to live in it. Okay, make that three groups: also adults who have lived here their entire lives and are also secretly cross-country ski champions.

I also avoid driving during January-February. I actually just got home from attempting to get an oil change across town, and in the process, my car slid and buckled and grazed ice chunks and drifted and all sorts of other unnatural/dangerous things. I turned around and went home because I didn't want to die today.

 

I will admit it is beautiful. I just wish I didn't have to live in it.