It’s a beautiful sunny day. Clear and sunny and 3 degrees. Yes, it’s Minnesota where hell does freeze over. I know you hearty folks who love to get out and snowmobile and ski and snowshoe and winter camp and ice fish and all those other forms of winter insanity will say that it’s a fabulous winter, plenty of snow to play in, but to me it’s just COLD. Yesterday I think Rebecca got the paper and brought in the mail so I didn’t even go outside all day. Someone said that April is the cruelest month. For that honor, I’ll give my vote to February.
My office is in what we fondly call the mudroom. Long and narrow behind the family room with the door to the garage on one end, it sits on a concrete slab, which means that as well as freezing me it’s probably dosing me with radon as well. The thermostat is on the floor above me, in a sunny, south facing room that warms up around noon and shuts down the heat. “Just toasty here boss, shut ‘er down.” So here in my north facing studio there is no heat. I did recently get a space heater, but it can only do so much. Some days by three o’clock it’s so cold down here that I just give up and go upstairs and kick back in the Barcalounger with a good book and a blanket. I don’t read the book, I just nap.
Here’s another thing to hate about February. Valentine’s Day. I pretty much hate all “Hallmark Holidays,” however, Lucia and Quinn if you are reading this, please feel free to shower me with tokens of your affection on Father’s day. I think my grudge against Valentine’s Day started in fifth grade, when I gave the girl who I thought was my girlfriend a card that I bought because I like the way it looked, without reading the text. I still don’t know what it said, but it seemed to inspire a lot of derision when she showed passed it around to her buddies. This year as Rebecca and I were drifting off to sleep on that special day I said, “Thanks for not getting me anything for Valentine’s Day.”
“Are you being sarcastic?”
“Hell no. That way I don’t have to feel guilty for not getting you anything either.”
Now that’s what I call true love.
