Dreaming of/Praying about/Begging for a white Christmas...

Is there anything more depressing than a winter without snow?

Now, I'm not talking about a Southern California winter. I grew up with those. It isn't really winter; December and January are really just months to give surfers a way to earn money to support their surfing for the rest of the year (snowboard instructors at Tahoe). While it isn't very Christmas-y, there is a certain glee to doing your holiday shopping in shorts and t-shirts (see my brother's blog, iamhoff.blogspot.com for details).

But I am not experiencing that glee; I'm talking about a Southern winter. A Mid-South winter, to be exact. Here in the Memphis area, it snows maybe once every other year, and then only if it is inconvenient for all involved. It doesn't last long, but it royally screws everything up for a day or two. Or we'll get an ice storm, which prolongs the agony even more. Otherwise, we get rain. Not a happy rain, not a rain where you sit on your porch with your glass of iced tea watching the lightning, not a rain where you snuggle down under your covers and listen to the awesome power of the thunder. No, this is a light rain, not quite light enough to be a drizzle, and 40 degrees. Ick. Even the dog, who normally enjoys both rain and cooler temperatures, makes his morning walk in record time. It is miserable. The weather here, humid to say the least, makes you stay cold and damp for hours. Bleah.

I spend all summer wishing it were cooler, and all winter wishing it weren't so dreary. It makes me long for my So Cal winters, or even my Laramie, WY winters (cold cold cold cold cold). Any extreme is better than this damp and depressing weather.

I think Bill Amend nailed it in his comic strip FoxTrot, when Paige said, "Dante was wrong. Hell is 33 degrees."