You Can Feel It Coming...

Most of my family and friends know that I am not a winter person. Snow and ice were only fun for me when the schools closed for the day and I was allowed to stay inside in my P.J.'s sipping hot chocolate and watching whatever programming could be found on daytime television. This was a rare thing growing up. In southern Arkansas, 9 times out of 10, when the ice/snow came, the power went out. No T.V., no staying in P.J.'s or risk freezing to death, and no freaking way to get my electric appliances to heat up the water for some hot chocolate. During one particularly bad ice storm, a tree decided it wanted a closer look at my family's trailer, from the inside out.
In college, the university had a strict policy when it came to snow classes. The University would only declare classes cancelled only if the next Ice Age dropped a glacier in the center of campus, and even then classes would open the next day if they could find enough rock salt and kitty litter to make the sidewalks a little less than lethal. Oh, many a time did I find myself thinking of that poor kid from the movie A Christmas Story trapped in his snow suit and unable to move while I was sprawled on my back, my backpack wedged beneath me, on an unsalted ice sheet that passed for a sidewalk.
I can feel Tennessee's winter coming. In the mornings I find myself feeling more and more like a Grizzly Bear, huddled in my warm cocoon of blankets, unwilling to budge until my alarm clock threatens to have a meltdown. I find myself dreaming of warm foods like Split Pea and Vietnamese Chicken Noodle soup. A neighborhood cat keeps trying to talk me into letting him sleep in my house when the nights are nippy, but I resist my soft heart, knowing that once he's in, he's there forever. Winter is coming, and I may hibernate until the first Daffodils appear.