Chill on the Bone-Chilling

Summer for Winter, Fabled Riffraff and the Chaotic Psychology of Kitchen Calendar Imagery

Got a bone to pick with you calendar-making types.

Just what in the frozen-over hell would make you think someone would want to look at pictures of ice and snow in the frozen-over hell of January and February? Up here in the Upper Midwest or Upper Great Plains during these unrelenting months, that just brings on another miserable shiver every time we look at our day trackers.

You’ve got it backwards.

Come January or February, when it’s tongue-stuck-to-flagpole, spit-freezin’-before-hittin’-the-ground, takes-an-hour-to-get-ready-to-go cold, when I glance at the calendar on the kitchen wall I want the three S’s – sand, surf and sun, baby! 

Close my eyes and imagine myself in the scene, feel the sun’s warmth on my face and stare at the orangish-red glow on the undersides of my eyelids. 

Not that I’m licking any flagpoles – that would be plain stupid – but still.

What’re you giving me, instead? The ISM’s, that’s what. Ice, snow and misery. I get a new bone-chilling with every glance the calendar’s way. Damn.

In fact, go ahead and flip the whole flippin’ calendar. 

Show me the ISM’s in July and August, when it’s so hot you can fry eggs on the sidewalk, spit dries before you glance down and the dogs won’t coax from under the porch. 

Well, not the M’s, maybe, but definitely the I’s and S’s. 

Close my eyes and imagine myself in the cool blue scene, sense the refreshing caress of the breeze, thrill at the phantom icy drips down the back of my coat and marvel at the yellowish glow of the frozen sun on the undersides of my eyelids.

We see enough of the ISM’s every doggone day of January and February out the window over the kitchen sink, not to mention for miles and miles out on the highway. 

And cold? Damn right it gets cold. Freakin’ frigid.

Do YOU think it matters that it’s a dry cold? Yeah, me neither.

Either way, it’s a cold most folks cannot even grasp. 

Example:

Zooming recently with some folks in Raleigh, N.C. They’d had an inch or two of snow over the weekend – unusual for North Carolina, granted – and it was 42° F. All the schools were closed. Took a snow day. 

So… what? We’re lucky?

Dumb?

Nah…

Well, maybe. 

Hardheaded, mostly.

Each of us has a choice to settle up here or skedaddle, hit the brittle bricks in search of a better winter life. Nobody’s got a gun to our head, the old saying goes. We’ve waived any right to frosty bitchin’ and moanin’ we might otherwise have reasonably claimed.

“Keeps the riffraff out,” another old saying goes. Good thing, too. We already have enough homegrown, blood-red, anti-vaxxing, science-denying riffers and raffers up this way. Don’t need any more.

There is one good thing about ISM’s on the ground and the calendar in the frozen-over hell of January and February, though. Gives us something to talk about. Up here, weather isn’t just small talk or boredom talking; we bring it up because, first, it’s serious business, and number two there isn’t much else to discuss.

Except politics. (Speaking of number two.)

But… well… that’s just not done. Against the rules, as they say. 

Besides, as far as politics goes, we’ve been wearing masks this time o’ year all along, not for COVID but to keep the frostbite off our noses and cheeks. So there.

I mean, do you even OWN a pair a’ long johns? 

Whatever. Just swap out those photos, will ya? 

Summer in winter, fall in spring, winter in summer and spring in fall – whatever we long for but can’t have, no matter what month it is…

Uhh… Wait.

Wait just an doors-frozen-shut minute –