Don't Care Why it's Cold. Just Want it to Stop.

Originally published April 13, 2013

It's Saturday morning, in the middle of April, and there's a fire blazing merrily in the wood stove. My hands are almost too cold to type. This is starting to make me mad.

You know, if I wanted to freeze in April, I'd move to Maine. I don't know if it's El Nino or La Nina this time that's causing the weather to be screwy, but whichever of those little brats is responsible needs to be switched.

I know I could get a logical explanation from the weather service, but I don't want one. I don't care if the jet stream has dropped down to the planet's belly like an old man's chest. Not interested in the way arctic air masses circulate as the rotational dysfunction overlaps the temperate zones.

I just want to clutch my fury in ignorance and demand that it get warm NOW. Please pardon my petulance, but it's been a long winter, and it's exhausting watching Joyce cut wood every weekend. I bet she's getting tired of it too.

If you haven't shown your wife how to use your chain saw, I highly recommend it. It was cute how scared she was the first time she cut down a big tree. She points out that it was equally cute how scared I was the first time I did.

Truthfully, the first one I harvested was a cedar about as big around as a child's wrist, and Joyce's first was a mature blackjack oak. But I didn't have a coach, and she did.

"OK, first you want to look at how the top limbs are leaning."

"I know."

"Then you want to figure out where you want it to fall."

"I know. I read that book too."

"You'll want to notch it on the side where you want it to fall."

"I know." Eyes rolled. "Then you - "An odd growling sound interrupted me, and I had to look to make sure she hadn't already started the chain saw. Luckily she hadn't, because I had some advice about how that was to be done too.

Joyce has become used to my safety briefings over the years. She can't approach the stove without a "Be careful!" from me. If she's pouring boiling spaghetti into a colander in the sink, I'm hovering nearby, reminding her that it's hot. If I'm closing her car door, I have to ask, "All in?" before doing so, as if she's going to leave some appendage hanging out to be severed.

I blame this worrywart behavior on two things, my dad and helping to raise a niece and nephew. To say that my father was overprotective is like saying Honey Boo Boo is mildly irritating. I was 16 and driving my '72 Maverick to work every day, but I still wasn't allowed to ride my bike in the country road, which sometimes was used by as many as seven vehicles per day.

With the kids, I often found myself leaping across the room to put my hand on the corner of the coffee table if a toddler came within three feet of it. You know there is a gravitational pull between hard corners and children's heads that science has never fully explained.

I don't keep a list of my top 10 shames, but number five or six would be the time I was holding my friend's baby, Sarah, on the deck of my house and the little vixen twisted in my arms and slammed her face into the deck rail, giving herself a bloody lip. Her dad, Tom, never brought the kids over again, but that might have had more to do with the desiccated fried chicken than my negligent child care skills.

Tom never mentioned the incident after that, although he did let slip recently that for some reason his daughter, now in junior high, has an irrational fear of portly fellows in baseball caps. Well, that's probably healthy anyway, so I guess it all worked out.

Where was I? Oh yeah, it's too cold. Sunday is predicted to be in the 70s, however, so anyone reading this is probably wondering what I'm whining about. This time.