Welcome, Spring!
Look what greeted us here in Chi-town on the very first day of spring!
I tell you what--I like a nice dusting of snow now and again in its proper season, but I'm sick and tired of this stuff by now. It's almost April, and I have not seen one crocus yet!
They say April is the cruelest month (well, T.S. Eliot did, anyway), but this March is giving April a run for its money. Tomorrow they say it will be close to 60. Then it will dip back into the 30s and... you guessed it! Snow. Feh.
If April is crueler than this, then can we just skip it and get on with May?
Labels: snow, where is spring?
posted by Cathy VanPatten at 9:57 PM
7 Comments:
I guess I shouldn't mention that it's 80 degrees here, and I'm wearing sandals. ;-)
You know, it's all about perspective. I'd be thrilled to have that snow of yours, and I expect you'd be happy to have my warm sunny weather. The grass is always greener...
Today in Richmond: high of 75, low of 45. The forsythia is blooming, jonquils/daffodils are peeking out from the ground, the pear trees are displaying their botanical versions of genitalia, and all the little VCU students are completely twitterpated by estrogen and testosterone (though, for the most part, their genitalia remain well-hidden).
I accept that I have now earned a well-placed bitch-slap.
And yet here in Chicago--it is snowing AGAIN!!!
Damn!
Usually by now we've had a few 70-degree days, although at this time of year they are always--ALWAYS--just nature blowing smoke at us. Usually we have to wait until May for consistently nice days. Then we have a few beauties in a row before it turns steamy and hot. I like many things about Chicago, but the weather is not one of them!!
And still, no crocuses (no croci?).
Just remind yourself that come July, August, and September, some of us will be roasting in the South, and you can sit smugly knowing that you, at least, aren't melting from a heat that could rival Hell itself. And I'll sit in abject jealousy of you and your cooler weather.
Well, we don't usually get quite as hot as you guys down there in Tejas (Oh, yes... we used to visit stepdaughter Rachel down in Austin in the summer, and it can get brutal!--Marfa in the summer hasn't been quite so bad, but then, there it's a "dry heat"!), but it can get pretty awful here too.
The first summer I lived here is now famous as the "body count summer," because something like 800 or 900 people died that July of heat-related causes. Most of them were seniors with no air conditioning.
We don't have air conditioning either... we usually count on the cross breeze from the lake. But there are times...
But yeah--usually not as bad as Texas in August!
Oh, well, if you don't have AC, then I guess I'll have to feel smug come summer. Of course, because it costs so much to run, I keep the thermostat set at 80, so it's not all that cool. But I have ceiling fans in every room.
When my sister's family moved to London in summer 2006, London was having a horrible heatwave with temps in the high 90s. No one had AC, so the whole city was roasting. I did feel bad for them, but at least they were somewhat accustomed to the high temps, unlike the Englanders.
We have ceiling fans too, and that helps a lot. And the old Chicago cliche of "cooler by the lake" does hold--at least for most of the summer.
I remember hearing about that heatwave and thinking how ill prepared the Brits are for that kind of thing. The thought of London sweltering... yikes!
One of these days we'll get around to having the central AC installed (we have a window unit, but the way the old windows are configured and the placement of window to bed (as in, right next to) keep us from using it. More trouble than it's worth--except for the dead of summer, when we kick ourselves for leaving it down in the basement!
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