Old Man Winter, I insist you desist

“It’s like Chinese water torture—slow and relentless,” he said, sour-toned on the dragging carcass of winter.

I couldn’t have put it better myself in 500 words. But what the heck, I can try.

The weather has played me out and I don’t play out easily. I don’t give up easily either and yet soon—very soon—in fact, perhaps right this minute I’m going to recant everything I said a few weeks ago during a momentary lapse of sanity when I got all syrupy about the emergence of spring.

Little did I know that when I wrote “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all,” that those feathers would molt, revealing a scrawny, half-frozen version of hope that is looking more and more like the wide-eyed demented New Orleans’ voodoo doll that I have sitting on my writing desk.

I think I’ve performed my “Yosemite Sam” temper tantrum three times this week, with each episodic fit involving a piece of winter clothing being stomped flat under my feet before I throw it down the stairs to the basement.

I even caught myself pointing a shaking finger at my scarf and my winter boots as I scolded them like small children for even thinking I was going to wear them again. Watching judgingly was “Millie the Cat” on haunches and with a squinty-eyed expression that said “the boss has lost it.”

Frustration over the lack of spring weather has reached its cold-hearted tentacles into my music library too. Instead of the usual upbeat and peppy tunes rocking my speakers, there’s “Country Girl Kiss-off” music blasting out all manner of “tell him to hit the road and to watch his back 'cause a country girl with an attitude always gets her revenge.”  Say what?

The weather has played me out and I’ve lost all good sense.

At the gas station the other day as I pulled my debit card out of the machine at the counter after buying more chocolate, I caught myself mumbling, “I was going to start eating right today but my ‘give a damn is busted’.”

I looked up to the store clerk whose saucer-eyed open-mouthed stupor meant I’d definitely been listening to “kiss-off” music way too much.

Stupid Old Man Winter.

I’ve even gone so far as to re-share a post to my Facebook page of the image of a snowman pummeled with knives and the caption, “Die, Winter, Die!”  What have I become?! 

Old Man Winter, the word is “enough.” Look it up.

And there I was, ready to pitch a suitcase into the back seat of my car and drive south until the butter melts until I realized I don’t have any holidays until August.

In her book “More Language of Letting Go,” Melody Beattie encourages that during the month of April we learn to identify and say what we want for our lives.

I’m pretty sure she isn’t talking about simple stuff like a little bit of warmer weather—but what the heck.

I want spring to come.