Lake Effect Envy

Lau­rie Halse Ander­son has been blog­ging about the lake effect snow falling on her home town in west­ern New York. She’s posted a photo of her doing her Lucy sam­pling the snowflakes imi­ta­tion, which is an annual occurrence. 

Mean­while, I sit here in rel­a­tively balmy coastal North Car­olina where today’s high was 64, accord­ing to the ther­mome­ter on my dash. It’s been a decade since I’ve seen snow and eleven years since I lived through an Ohio win­ter that had so much white stuff, I got cabin fever. Every day, I pray that the weather stays warm so that the fur­nace won’t run. We have a propane unit, and gas is run­ning of $3.50 a gal­lon here. Cold weather equals burn­ing money.

And yet, I envy Lau­rie and her snow (also an annual occur­rence). The notion of hiber­nat­ing in a warm house, shut away from the world (except for inter­net ser­vice, of course) has so much appeal for me. It’s the idyl­lic set­ting that draws me, the wish for a sim­pler life with­out career, errands, bills, oblig­a­tions, paper­work, meet­ings, meet­ings, meet­ings. I don’t like frigid tem­per­a­tures, and I live near the beach, which is place that many oth­ers think fondly of this time of year as they trudge to their cars every morn­ing to chip away ice and snow, start the engine to warm it up, and drive with mit­tens to keep from freez­ing their hands.

It’s nat­ural to wish for that which you don’t have, but right now, if offered a snow for beach trade, I would take it. Wouldn’t you?

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