December in Ohio: "Man, we've lucked out with only having a few snowy days this month... Still, it would be nice to have a white Christmas."

January in Ohio: "I don't think it's stopped snowing for more than 5 minutes in the past 15 days! Will it ever end? Why aren't they salting the roads? It's an ice rink out there on the expressway!!!"

February in Ohio: "Please say that this is the last month of this? Did the groundhog see his shadow? Who even cares; it isn't going to make a difference anyway! I miss the sun."

March and April can pretty much be summed up by a muffled whimpering sound and a fear that any sort of natural heat has forsaken this part of the country. Most years the last snowfall is in early April sometime, just when we're all on the brink of an ice-induced insanity.

I think my internal weather clock is about a month ahead of schedule this year because muffled whimpering is sounding very good right now. The past few days have consisted of a teasingly balmy climate that has hovered somewhere in the mid-30's. Cheering for a forcast of 35 degrees is both depressing and pathetic. The good news there is that the freezing rain that was predicted to come with that heatwave seems to have missed us, more or less and the real rain that fell did a good job of getting rid of most of the accumulated snow from the whole month of January and the 2-3 inch sheet of ice that was left over in parking lots and some side streets from the previous spell of freezing rain. I'm still real happy and thankful for all of the lovely things I've learned from living in a snow state and the wonderful experiences contained in 24 years of such... But damn. I'm ready for the spring.

I've been feeling particularly blah and dumpy today and I'm hoping that it's just the weather that I can blame. Unfortunately, I don't think that's the whole story here. I got my bonus at work yesterday and I can't complain about it one bit, however it's more or less already spent due to our anniversary return to Las Vegas and the fact that I lost my head over Christmas. And still that doesn't even cover it. It's not that big of a deal... I'll have Christmas and whatnot paid off by April or May like most normal people. I just can't seem to get ahead of the game though and I don't really know what the problem with that is. Then, of course we have the repairs (mainly aesthetic and legally oriented...burned out tail light, dinged windshield... Nothing really super huge in terms of functioning) that Jeff's car will be needing very soon, plus we're both due for a tune up. So getting ahead isn't really in the cards for the near future.

And now the prospects for a relaxing evening at mom's are more or less not in the cards for tonight either. Mom wasn't here when I arrived, but managed to show up here a second ago. That little voice that tells no lies always screams at me in this situation to leave and not turn back when she's away unexpectedly. Just file this evening as a loss in the books, it says, and find something else to do. I never listen. She always comes home before I leave. She's always been drinking. Today, since she finally got rid of her husband and my brother's not here and I'm hiding, she decided to get into it with her renter and his guest. I'm not sure what she's going to do if he moves out; he's really the only thing keeping her afloat and my brother cannot afford to pick up the slack in expenses without him here. The worst part of all of it is that he's an okay guy, not someone I'd likely know or talk to if I didn't know him through Mom, but okay just the same. They've been friends since they were 14-years-old or some such ridiculously long time. I suppose someone should have let him in on the little secret that this was all going to end badly for them before he decided to move in here. I had hoped that since they'd been friends for so long that perhaps they had an understanding and could know when to avoid eachother and whatnot. Errr... Well, I guess things like this never work out the way that you hope they will. This house really isn't big enough to have anyone who isn't family living here. There's too much possibility of stepping on everyone's toes. It really brings back some memories of other situations that I've been in that ended badly but that I should've known better than to get into in the first place. If there's one think I've learned it is that if something feels wrong then you're an idiot for going ahead and doing it anyway. So much avoidable pain... So much lost time. Ah, but I guess I'm going off on a bit of a tangent. The bottom line is that while I love my family dearly, I've found that I get along with most of them better when we're not all living under the same roof. Coping mechanisms do not equal happiness.

Stay Tuned...

Before And After

Would I get a discount if I birthed the baby in the store? - 5/16/05
The end is near? - 5/13/05
The progession of me - 5/10/05
Cleaning update - 5/7/05
Pre-nesting - 5/7/05