Curses!

Winter has come to mid Michigan and I'm pissed about it. The summer had hung on so long around here - through September and even into October - that I had snagged a notion it might never end.

I like shorts and T-shirts and going around in sunshine. It fits the inner concept of myself as an essential child of nature. Who wants to be distressed by too many threads and seams? Not me; and I'm convinced that mankind evolved in warm places, not in piles of ice and snow. The original plan was for aborigines, not eskimos.

A world of young people dressed in frivolous lightness is so much better than overburdened boot scufflers and overcoated, bent backed women or ugly men in Russian earwarmers. Let's see the legs and arms, proof of freedom.

So, yesterday, there were the first snowflakes. I walked into the doctor's office with cold wind and damp snow slapping at me, and I looked as grouchy as I possibly could. Someone will tell me that at least it didn't accumulate like in Buffalo or Marquette. Well, shut up about that. One flake may not make a winter, but two flakes are enough to make misery.

Today the skies are gloomy and gray and full of hatred. Friendly skies don't glower and mope. This overbearing fogginess is meant to drive me crazy, and it eventually will. It'll have me unbalanced, if not this month, then the next or the next or the next. Bonjour tristesse!