It's So Flipping Cold Out.

It's always around this time of year that I begin to hate winter. It's not entirely that I'm out of things to do. No, there's plenty to do. In fact, I've comprised a list of things that I could do:

-Cross country skiing.

-Snultimate

-Ice skating

-Walking around aimlessly and see how much feeling I can lose in my extremities

-Hibernating with cocoa

-Studying

-Leveling up in the Frostbite game.

Clearly, most of these, with the exception of four, five, six and seven, are extremely limited when it gets to, say, below ten degrees.

There are all of those great public service people who come onto the morning news to talk about children's health and how easy it is to find great outdoor exercise for your kids, even in the winter. They lie. Unless you want your kids leveling up in the Frostbite Game. With the windchill today, it is thirty below. Owie. My hands felt crystallized after less than a one-minute walk from the door of the car to the door of the school.

When I was in eighth grade, I walked to and from school. In the spring and fall, I would even rollerblade the few winding blocks between my house and the school. In the winter, I would trek through the snowbanks, but only when I couldn't beg a ride from my parents (who, according to legend, were forced to walk to school with bare feet, uphill both ways with all of the neighborhood children on their backs). One day, unexpectedly, I was without a ride home, and so resorted to walking. Unfortunately, by some stroke of a universal loathing, this also happened to be the coldest day of the year. Twenty five degrees below zero, with the blistering windchill. And unfortunately for me, I not only was without mittens or a hat, but I also had to carry one of those big, bulky, tri-fold posters home. The idiot in me refused the offers of mittens from concerned teachers, and I trotted off in the direction of home. Well, halfway down the first street, the skin on my fingers clutching the posterboard were aching and pinching with the awful frigidness of the day. For another street or so, I transferred my hands, one holding onto the poster while the other balled up to try and regain warmth. This stopped working after awhile, and halfway between the school and home, I began to get frantic. Remembering that the air from my mouth is obviously heated more than the air outside, I began alternately stuffing as many of my fingers in my mouth as I could while trooping on, every step surging with a pinch of pain, because, of course, I also had no boots. To make matters worse, I didn't realize that as I was sticking my fingers in my mouth, I was also getting them wet, causing the cells in my finger tips to freeze more quickly. And so, as I embarked onto my home street, the home stretch, the final leg, I began to cry, certain that I wouldn't make it. My legs were tired and tingled with the cold, my feet numb, my fingers on that painful verge of numb that haunts nightmares- except for my thumbs, which sent me over that crying edge, because I couldn't feel them at all. I considered more than once just throwing my posterboard into a snowbank and fleeing home, but it was a very important project, and I wasn't about to let it go to waste.

And so, I cannot imagine what my mother might have thought when I finally arrived home. Unable to move my fingers enough to manage the doorknob, and too frozen to knock without pain, I pounded my forehead against the pane of the door.

What I must have looked like to her, a little fourteen year-old girl in a skirted uniform, nose and ears bright red, snot and tears running in tracks down my face that made hair stick to my skin, and fingers immobile, clutching a posterboard with the title, "Forensic Entomology".

So now you see, unless I find some remarkable change in personality that causes me to crave another level-up in the Frostbite Game, I have no other option but to hibernate inside.

Forgive me Play 60. But there's no way in Hell that I'm going outside...to Hell.

What do you get when you cross Christmas with lots of yarn and fabulous patterns?

My annual challenge has arrived: Find Christmas presents for all of my friends while staying within my (rather lacking) budget.
And in my ruminations on how exactly to attain presents for approximately twenty plus people, I realized I could (as they say) kill two birds with one stone.
Remember when I was looking for good knitting patterns, because of my surplus of super nice yarn? Well, it's okay if you don't. But now I've decided to provide for half of my christmas presents by knitting them awesome things. And by awesome, I mean awesome. And easy.

In my search for a koala bear pattern (for a friend of mine who heavily resembles a koala bear. He's also Jewish, but I'm still giving him his present on Christmas, especially since Hannukah starts today, and I haven't even started it), I found a site with a list of fun animal patterns, and I've taken a good lot of ideas from there.
So, lo and behold...
my project list for the next three weeks:

A little Koala
Probably a Tree Ornament
Finger Puppets. BEST GIFT EVER.
Probably more ornaments. Piggy?
And the best one yet: DINOS
On top of this, I'm starting a hat and a scarf so that I don't freeze this winter.
All in all, I ought to be happily knitting very soon.

Winter and Germs and Collard Greens? Oh my, oh my.

Snow has fallen
and stayed fallen
blanketing the mud and green
covering up the cracks
and filling in the potholes
of the roads we crack and curve

Dear winter,
you're here
and so am I.





Thanksgiving break brought snowfall almost everyday. It's not quite enough to make legitimate snowbanks, but it's just a slight blanket over everything. It puts me in a good Christmas mood, which is nice, because there are plenty of seasonal things to do. Friday night will be our annual Classy Christmas Shopping, where we all head downtown to buy presents for each other locally (sneakily, because we all go together...to buy gifts for each other). This year we're making it a ladies night, because we decided not only that it would work better logistically (as in, we can get our gifts for the boys without them being around), but that boys are impatient shoppers. Downtown is not only a great place to shop for Christmas because it tends to be cheaper and much much more unique, as well as local, but because our downtown is so beautiful in the snow. The sun sets super early, so even when we go right after school, the streetlights come up to deter the falling dark and cast everything into a golden orange glow, the snow glistening nearby. Shopowners put up little lights in their windows and wreaths on their doors. The bagel shop puts out a menorah, and there's eggnog and cider enough to make everyone glad.

My beautiful city in the snow

We still haven't picked our collard greens, and I suppose now it's too late. They're a really hardy vegetable, okay to eat after the first frost. But after the first three snows, I'm not so sure.
With winter (which, by the way, is defined by the temperature and snowfall in Maine, not the date) comes a whole 'nother season, one much less pleasant. The season of SICK. Everyone around me has a cold or a flu, so I know that this tickle in the back of my throat has got to be something. Hellooo throatcoat.
I'm of the conviction that all of that crap about using Germ-x or whatever to clear away germs is a load of bullshit. You need germs to live long, and Germ-x doesn't actually kill anything unless you wash your hands right before. There are little hand sanitizer dispensers at places all around my school, and I just want to knock them down with a baseball bat. I mean, some of them make sense, like in the bathroom next to the paper towels. Although, the thought that a lot of girls then bypass actual handwashing for a squirt of alcohol on the palms of their hands is a little nasty. But sometimes, the dispensers are just holstered up in the middle of a hallway. What? Hold up guys, I've just gotta smear a glob of chemicals onto my hands before I walk into Spanish class.

It is time to bid adieu to my lovely bicycle, at least until next spring. Goodbye, dear. It's been a wonderful season.

What's Happening? Well, I'll Tell Ya What's Happening...

I honestly have never been a fan of Thanksgiving. It makes me feel gluttonous, and means we have to clean.

But this year, it's not so bad. Especially since the break from school was well needed (yeah, that whole thing about Junior year being from hell was preeetty much true). Tuesday night, my friends and I partook in what will surely become a great tradition. We settled in together with cocoa and blankets, a wholesome scene, to be sure...and watched Thankskilling. Great choice guys. Really, it was classy. I recommend it to all who don't mind awful acting, bestiality, and profanity.

This was followed up by an extremely chilly game of Turkey Disc. Everyone who showed up gets an intensity medal, just for being there. It was snowing slightly, and the mud was freezing beneath our feet, but we trooped on, if only to preserve our dignity.

Tuesday, my creative writing teacher told us about the Turkey Trek happening in the City Forest. Four miles, at your own pace. Bring food for the food cupboard. Eight AM. I tentatively raised my hand to say I might show up. And for some disgustingly strange reason, I got up this morning at seven, and did it. The only reason I went was because I convinced my friend to do it with me, meaning that I couldn't back out without being a wuss. Speaking of dignity...

So I hopped on my bike, and rode to his house (coldest ride of my entire life, by the way), from where we drove out to the forest. Four miles doesnt seem like much, but I am nothing of a runner. Zilch. No running. Not since I quit track my freshman year. Once or twice a year, I'll convince my gullible self that I can run, and that it will make me a better person, but it ends with me going for a few (slow and taxing) runs, hurting my lungs or my achilles, and then calling it good. Beyond that, I disc. The. End.

So, God only knows what I was doing in the middle of the woods on Thanksgiving day at eight in the morning with running shoes on. We jogged and walked alternately, because my asthma didn't respond well to the weather, but I did it, and that's all that counts, right? [I almost have myself convinced that I'm a runner now. Becca, you champ!]

On a mostly unrelated topic, I have a cat.

Sort of.

One of my friends has a cat, who has downsyndrome. Or, at least that's what they presume, because she's really really really stupid and has crossed eyes [thanks very much, siamese inbreeding]. Her name is Squeaky [actually, it's Miko, but she only responds to Squeaky], and we were meant to be.

So, she's on loan. We've taken to calling her Squawky, because that's more what her little "MAOW MAOW"s sound like. Little Squawky thought that five thirty was an excellent time to come into my room and squawk at me for a half an hour. This means war.

Thoughts on the Beginning of Winter, as Snow Drifts Lazily By

I'm in the library, where I am dreading even this two-day week.
Soft, speckly snowflakes are traipsing by the large windows, and I am ready for christmas music.
I like Christmas music, at least in the beginning. It's all so hopeful and charming, and it's all about the times that I love. But, I refuse to start listening to it until after Thanksgiving. Some radio stations begin playing it even before Black Friday, but I won't, won't, won't turn them on. It's got to be properly cold, properly initiated, properly begun.

The world is so beautiful in snow, and I'm wondering if that's because the ugliness of the ground is covered up, and beautified in the glistening, blinding white, or if it's because the cold, hostile winter brings hope of an even more beautiful spring.
I love winter, not just for the snow and the chaos of the season, but also because it means needing to snuggle up inside, and drinking hot cocoa, and it means that we have to find adventure for ourselves and hibernate in each other's company. Maybe that's why it's beautiful.