This is Spring?

You know how I mentioned that Spring had headed South for Easter weekend? Yeah.

We had snow flurries this afternoon. Nothing stuck, but it was definitely snow flurries. Light fluffy stuff twirling through the sky. It looked pretty with the sun peeking through the clouds and glinting off all the tiny little snowflakes floating in the air. But it was still SNOW. Otherwise known as ICE CRYSTALS. I took a couple of pictures because I couldn't believe it.

Easter is tomorrow. I'm sure we had snow a couple of times when I was little, there may even be a couple of pictures of my sister and I in our fancy Easter clothes standing in the snow in front of the house. But that's not what comes to mind when I think of Easter. Easter for me means flowers and new dresses with short sleeves and new shoes. Blooms and buds on the trees. Spring. A time of birth and rebirth, and new growth and regrowth. Warmth and sun and blue sky and lots and lots of colors, lots of different shades of green on the ground and in the trees, and don't forget the colored eggs.

Color. Lots and lots of color. NOT white snow. The only white is on your shiny new shoes and crisp white dress gloves and, if you're lucky enough to get one, your fancy Easter hat with the big satin ribbon on it. [OK, so I think I only had a hat ONE year, and I remember wearing it drove me nuts, but Easter still makes me think of fancy hats.]

And we have SNOW. I hope the Easter Bunny (or Easter Bilby for those in Australia) has an extra thick winter coat with a hat to keep his ears warm. And little booties for his poor cold little paws as he hides all those eggs.

Now I understand why the Easter Bunny always hid eggs INSIDE the house and not outside in the yard when I was little.

It's *cold*, dammit!

It's cold out. Seriously cold. And it has been for months now, despite all predictions for a mild winter and that it was going to end early. Today is deceptively cold. It looks nice out. Sunny with a clear blue sky. So when you look through the window it doesn't look that bad. The temperature isn't even all that cold: mid-20s Fahrenheit. But then there's the wind. Wind chills down to the single digits and sometimes even into the negative range. And tomorrow it's supposed to snow again.

Now I'm not one to normally complain about the cold. People have described me as a "human heater", a trait I share with my dad and sister. We don't get all that cold, ever. Yes, extremities get cold, but they do warm up, and usually quite quickly for me. I can't use flannel sheets because I get too warm, even in the coldest of cold snaps. Besides, when it's cold, you can always add more layers. Generally, cold doesn't bother me, and neither does snow. In fact, I kind of like winter. Fall and spring are my favorite seasons, particularly because I love that snap and crisp feel to the air, the cool evenings, but I don't mind the cold of winter.

Heat, on the other hand, is another issue. I'm not a big fan. You can only peel off so many layers before you're naked. Once your naked, there are no more layers. All you are is hot and covered in sticky sweat, stuck standing in front of or below a fan praying for some relief from the heat radiating from your person. Yuck. Over the years my body has learned to adjust to extreme heat, but that doesn't mean I like it.

Back to the cold. I know what you're going to say. March comes in like a lion and this cold is the lion part, right? My take on things is that the damn groundhog lied this year and we are having six more weeks of winter. And that day this past weekend where it was 60F out? Yeah, an anomaly just like that 70 degree day we had in early January. It's still winter, dammit.

Normally, six more weeks of winter wouldn't bother me, but the deceptive cold that it is today causes me to complain. The wind makes your eyes water, and then, if it continues to gust, it freezes those tears to your lashes. Or, if the wind gust passes, you feel the tears coursing down your cheek like hot lava digging crevasses into your skin. Cold enough to make my skin hurt under my layers and to wince when the wind blows up my coat. I'm home and warm now, but that walk home was vicious.

And on my walk I saw something I could hardly believe. A person outside, walking home from a corner store, in a T-shirt and jeans. A T-shirt. I can only explain this as either:
a) the person is from Antarctica so temps in the 20s with sub-zero wind chill feels balmy
-OR-
b) they're insane and trying to kill themselves by getting pneumonia.

I just can't decide which.