by Connie Oswald Stofko
You have to brush off your car every time you want to go anywhere.
There’s shoveling. Then there’s more shoveling. Then there’s still more shoveling.
The air is so bitter that if it touches your forehead, you get brain freeze, also known as an ice cream headache. Only there’s no ice cream.
There are a lot of reasons to irritated, fed up and cranky. If you want to pout and complain, you’re justified. And sometimes it helps to vent a little and get things off your chest.
But if you make it a habit to gripe, it can make you crabbier. You create your own bad day. And it rubs off on the people around you.
It isn’t spring and you can’t putter in your garden. Instead of mourning what we don’t have right now, let’s embrace what we do have. I can’t see the grass in my backyard, but who cares when the sun glinting off the snow makes it look as if I have a lawn covered in diamonds? It’s a breathtaking sight that I can view as I wash dishes. I can take walks in local parks see other spectacular scenery for free. Yet people in warmer parts of the world will never have the opportunity to witness something like that.
So relax. Take a breath. Enjoy what you have.
Look for the diamonds in the snow.
My theory is that because the weather in Western New is so changeable, we can tolerate any kind of weather, but only three days at a time. Even if it’s 85 degrees and sunny, after three days people will start complaining about how hot and dry it is.
Very nice thoughts Connie. We do have a similar perspective on the winter. Every season I write about the people that complain. My readers are from many places, and some of those places are not accustomed to the snow.
Lots of folks are never happy it seems. For each season they wish to arrive, they are in a hurry to move onto the next. Gardeners are fickle it seems. Wait until summer when the complaining gets rabid! I still think Buffalo folks are a tough bunch though. Yes we shovel a lot, but we also enjoy the pretty views that winter brings.