I WANT AN EXPLANATION!!!

Finally, the warm summer weather has arrived, just in time for Memorial Day. 

How does it know?

I don’t need to tell you that, for the most part, May pretty much sucked around here. I think we had 47,000 inches of rain, with an average daytime temperature of 26 degrees or something.  I believe there might have been several inches of snow as well. 

See how quickly we forget.

As a freelance worker person, who mostly works from home, you might assume that I’m pretty much unaffected by the weather.  But that would be a misconception.  Fact is, I am always, very concerned about the weather.  To begin with, dark, miserable days of any sort make it very difficult for me to get out of bed in the morning.  And I won’t even mention the toll it takes on my 6 step commute. The newspapers are often soggy and traffic really backs up by the coffee maker. As a result, my pot of Chock full O Nuts, which my wife turns on as she walks out the door at 6:45 AM for her “real” commute, is sometimes stale, depending on the length of my delayed arrival. 

Yes…I know.  But I never mention it, as I’m not wont to complain.  I’m just that kind of person.  But I’m just saying….

Snowy days are the worst since my wife has a love/hate relationship with snow. She loves it on weekends and holidays but hates it during the week.  I guess maybe because she has to drive through the slop, down to the Bronx and back, while I, as I said, have about a 12 step commute (notice it keeps getting longer?). 

 After a large overnight snowfall, she's been known to pop out of bed at 5 AM, speak in tongue, run down the stairs, grab a shovel, bolt out the door and immediately start shoveling, long before the sun comes up. 

But she really enjoys it…at least that’s what I tell myself…and my neighbors.

Scrape..scrape…scrape.

That’s the awful sound I’ve woken up to on many a frozen morning. Awful because I know I HAVE to get out there too. I mean I’m not a complete schlub.  And to be honest, I kind of like shoveling, myself…once in a while.  Not every other day. Not before dawn.

I usually get out there by the time she reaches the end of the front walk, which is moderately long. Sometimes she’s already made the turn and has carved a meticulously clean path half way down the sidewalk, as well. 

I’m usually greeted with, “You didn’t have to come out!”

I usually mutter something unintelligible in return and grab my shovel. 

Then she continues, in the cheeriest voice you can imagine, “I’m gonna  finish up here, make breakfast, do a load of laundry, iron, clean the bath tub…and then shower, dress and get to work by 8!  How’s your day look?”

It’s about then that I begin hacking at the wall of ice that the snow plow has left at the end of my driveway.

And bad weather is, well, bad enough, but the predictors or non-predictors of the weather make it even more so.  Have you noticed how off the weather folk are these days? It rains when they say it will be sunny. It’s sunny when they say it will rain.  It hails frozen locusts when they say it will be a great day for the beach!

And if I listen to 5 different forecasters, I’ll get 5 different forecasts. Kind of a multiple choice forecast, in which I get to choose the one that best suits what I want to happen.

And when the sunny day turns into the day of the locusts, they come back the next day and act as if they had been expecting the locusts all along. Or maybe they think we just forgot, what with all the locust shoveling.
 
And the smiles and “oh, what can you do” attitudes;  like this is the funniest thing in the world, these locusts.  Well, when I have a BBQ planned for 100 people (okay, maybe more like 20) and I’m expecting  a warm sunny day, but instead get locusts, I am not appreciating the smirks and funny “woe is you” exchanges. 

I WANT AN EXPLANATION!!!  

 But do I get it?  No...all I get, besides the locusts complaining that the onion dip is too bland, is 100 miserable people (okay, maybe more like 10) sitting in my house watching TV…usually the weather. 

So here it is, Memorial Day, 2011…and I’m writing about snow...and locusts.

Go figure.

I guess it's been that kind of year….

And really, what’s the difference between partly sunny and partly cloudy, anyway? 

Really, what?