March 2011 is for the dogs, as are Mother Nature and groundhogs
By Allyson Kenning
I usually look forward to March, but I have to say this month has been hideous. I am beginning to think that Mother Nature is playing head games with us and that Groundhog Day should be banned. It’s been over six weeks since those rodents indicated to us that winter would last another six weeks, so their predictions are an epic fail in my opinion and we should just set all the groundhogs free into their natural environments with a curt ‘thanks for your hard work all these years, but the tribe has spoken, so buh-bye’.
The only telltale sign of spring I have come across lately is the smell of decaying dog poop and other organic detritus along the sides of the road, where the melting snow and slightly warmer temperatures combine to create that distinctive odour only at this time of year. It’s not the most auspicious sign of spring, but it’s the only one I can discern right now in a quantifiable way. That telltale scent tells a lot, however. Given how are far we are into March right now, I was expecting a little more.
The two glaciers residing in my front yard on either side of my walkway (which I have given up on shovelling because shovelling that sucker this winter has caused my shoulder tendonitis to flare up and I’d much rather pick my way over the snow than sit around having to swallow anti-inflammatories and ice my shoulder for half an hour after an epic shovelling session) are depressing to say the least. At this rate, I estimate they’ll be there until July.
In fact, I don’t expect the usual crocuses to come up before June the way things are looking at the moment. This is not good because I want to plant a garden where the glaciers are located right now, and I suspect that in order to do this I’m going to be one of those people who goes out into their front yard to shovel the snow onto the road in order to get it off their lawns. Except that won’t work for me because of my shoulder. I am stuck between a glacier and a hard place!
The lack of sunlight is making me feel tense and irritable. I still spend a considerable time in front of Miss Happy the SAD lamp (previously written about here), but I am starting to feel like I need to hook her up to a battery source, get a wagon, and somehow cart her around with me everywhere I go. Either that, or someone needs to invent a SAD lamp visor I can wear like sunglasses so I can have some fake sunshine wherever I go. I don’t care if it makes me look like Geordie Laforge: I am so desperate I’ll forgo rational fashion sense in order to keep myself in rays.
And don’t get me started on daylight savings time and the whole spring forward garbage we all did on the 13th. I dread both clock-changing events we have in the year because, for some odd reason, I am particularly sensitive to the change, and it often takes me a few weeks to adjust properly. Why do we even do this anymore? It seems so pointless and backwards. I would like to see the government do a big study on just exactly how much energy this does save us, because I for one wouldn’t mind seeing some hard evidence that DST is actually worth it.
Another topic you should not get me started on is my heating bill. Fortis sent me a nice little invoice for my account reconciliation this week (by the way, did anyone else out there not know Terasen was bought out by Fortis until they got their bill this month?) and, lo and behold, I had a whopping forty-four cent credit. Because I have been keeping my heat so low (I warn people who come to visit me to dress in layers because I keep my place cold) and freezing nearly to death all winter, I’d hoped to have a larger credit than that, but no. Forty-four cents it was. What I’d like to do right now is cut back onmy natural gas use by about 50%, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards.
So, you’re probably thinking right now, ‘wow, she’s really cranky’. No kidding! I feel cranky. I feel cooped up. I feel like I need to move to Cuba next winter. For those of us whose mood is affected so much by the weather, March has been horrible.
However, despite my irritability, I remain optimistic: April can only be better, right? Because it really can’t be much worse!
