Wild Year

Christmas had a high of 63 degrees. It was overcast; raining. New Year’s Eve. It’s 60 degrees; sunny with clear skies. It’s interesting when the weather doesn’t reflect our moods, attitude or life circumstance. I think we typically align ourselves with the weather.

I must say I’m feeling out of wack, with tornado watches issued shortly before noon Sunday, for the areas including, the western region of my mental health and the northern portions of my ability to deal rationally with my disconcerted precarious emotional situation.

What do they say though, tomorrow is a new day? Sleep on it? The glass is half full? I’ll get another shot at this tomorrow.

It’s supposed be a high of 61 degrees with only a 20% chance of rain.

Indian Summer

It was after we had gone swimming at the YMCA enough times to have our jack knives down to perfection, eaten enough Hawaiian Ice to make us never want to go to Kona and annoyed each other’s brothers, sisters, parents and extended family to the point of them banning sleep overs that we started contemplating the season change. If we had it our way, we would have just skipped fall and gone straight in to winter.

Halloween should’ve been in July. I dressed up like Han Solo. Michelle was Leia. I might have seen her picking out her costume at Halloween express.

The snow the previous winter had been as sparse as my interactions with Michelle and school hadn’t been cancelled once. We hoped that this would be our year, though. Northern Kentucky hadn’t seen a Blizzard since I was in 4th grade and I was going into 8th this year. We were due.

The weather finally broke and the region had its first cold snap in October. We were hopeful for a long winter of sled riding, snow ball fights and plenty of school closings. I also wanted to see Michelle. She was in AP classes and was basically MIA during the school year. She lived across the street, but it might as well have been Indiana.

Fall was a let down. The temperature never dropped below freezing most nights. It would just hover around 32 degrees taunting and torturing us, like a girl on prom night who would only let you play “just the tip.”

Friends and family from warmer climates found it odd that my brother and I had such an interest in meteorology. They didn’t understand our motives. Not to mention every kid in my school could read a barometer and understood Doppler Radar. It’s just how it was when you were passionate about being a slacker.

Like most years we didn’t have a White Christmas. The sky resembled how we felt, grey and overcast. It was like that 8 months out of the year in the Ohio River Valley. Christmas break wasn’t long enough and there was still no snow in sight. January was upon us and for some reason, I had written off the idea of snow. I’m not sure why considering winter always lasted until April.

It was a Wednesday. My parents called from an Olive Garden. My mom was laughing. She said that we couldn’t leave the house. I thought she might have turned the gas on and hid a lit candle under the sink. She told me to look out the window. The trees were bending. I had been back in school for three days.

Ice covered everything. It started snowing and it didn’t stop for 48 hours. It felt like Stephen King’s Storm of the Century, minus a demon trying to steal children. We mounted up.

We chose sides for the first snowball fight of the season with little care for each other’s feelings. My brother and I were captains because we played baseball. Craig got picked last because he was an asshole.

The battle started off slow because we were all trying to acclimate ourselves to the two feet of snow that consumed us. Naturally, Craig started calling everyone “fags” and the contest escalated.

I’m really not sure when she appeared or why I decided to put a rock in a snowball, but Michelle looked like a piece of art lying in the snow. Blood poured out of her eye. She was beautiful.