I remember thinking at the end of January, that this year's Farmer's Almanac prediction of heavy snowfall like that of last year must have been wrong. But those guys are almost never wrong. I just didn't know that it would all fall in a two and a half week span in February.
If the following list gets rather specific, infer from that what you will...
You've lost track of what number blizzard we are on.
There is a bottle of Berkshire Brewing Company's "Cabin Fever" in your fridge right now.
You check Instagram every three minutes, just to remind yourself that real people exist outside the icicles covering your windows.
You cook, eat, and bake all the things because there is just no need to feel hunger for more than half a second, if at all.
You take pictures of all the things you cook, eat, and bake and post them on Instagram, to delude yourself into thinking you have a life.
You start chomping on your vitamin D pills as though they were Xanax.
Even if you are just responsible for a sidewalk, the Sisyphean task of constant shoveling throws you into an existential crisis about the futility of work in general. (Not true for everyone? Just me, you say?)
You work with your neighbors to designate jobs for the bi-weekly shoveling out of cars; there are assigned diggers, cleaners, pushers, drivers and scouters of oncoming traffic from beyond the six foot tall snowdrifts. What could be worse than completing the triumph of finally liberating one's car from the driveway, only to have it totaled upon entering the as-yet invisible street?
It's like one of those nightmares where no one heeds your warnings. You tell everyone that Mayor Walsh has said not to bother digging out your cars with the parking ban still in effect until the next day. When no one listens, you feel shoveling-induced guilt and you bundle up and help the husband and neighbors with the cars. With ecstatic screams of collaborative victory when the vehicles are finally unleashed, you find 15 minutes later that you all got $45 parking tickets. No one saw this while it was happening because of the six foot tall snowdrifts, (see previous).
You live in Jamaica Plain, where everyone but you seems to have at least one dog, so you pass no less than 14 electric yellow urine spots throughout the snowbanks in every block.
There is not enough room in the sidewalk pathways for two pedestrians, so every encounter with a person, (and/or dog), means an awkward interchange about who is going to step aside first. If you are like me, you will hopefully slip and fall in front of the other person. Don't worry though, there is no place to really fall. You just sort of inelegantly bounce off the snowbanks.
On a similar note, leaving the house requires ski pants.
The mere thought of entering the T station has you already breaking into a twitch, thinking about the vast mass of humanity, waiting on the platform to claw its way onto the same car as you. You have entered the land of no manners, where people's dark cannibalistic underbellies are exposed to all. This is not the typical part of people you are used to seeing exposed on the T.
You start wishing we had those people whose job it is to push you into the train cars like in Japan:
The idea of a normally functioning public transit system makes you break out into maniacal laughter.
You find yourself saying for the first time ever; "At least I'm taking the green line tonight".
After you take the green line five stops and it takes 45 minutes, you think; Well that wasn't bad.
After you get off the train, you walk into a local coffee chain only to find that it's the end of the world because they have ACTUALLY no food. They are completely out of sandwiches and salads. You are in some kind of bizarre twilight zone.
Minutes after you find no food at a usually food-filled establishment, the news hits the internet that the General Manager of the MBTA is resigning, surprising no one. Let the jokes about Boston Olympics 2024 commence!
A two mile uber ride now costs $69 and the taxi company you call requesting a cab for 20 minutes hence actually laughs at you.
There was no snow on Christmas or even the entire month of January.
When it stops snowing for several minutes, the temperature will not be above seven degrees, just to insure your misery.
Also, your down coat's zipper is broken but the good people of the North Face tell you it will take two months to fix and return to you. So you use the buttons and are constantly trying to adjust the vents that the lack of zipper has now created, because the air is painful.
Your dryer breaks mid-storm one day, so you are surrounded by your own wet underwear which never seems to dry.
Meanwhile, your skin is quite dry and is actually staging a revolt against your body for independence.
You really wish your face would stop peeling on your coat, because you can't get it cleaned until Spring. You need that shit.
You seriously doubt the existence of Spring. They talk about it being four weeks away, but you've forgotten what basic things like "the sun" and "happiness" feel like.
You stop obsessively looking at the weather forecast, because you can't even.
You think fondly of all those rainy seasons when you said; "At least it isn't snow!", because now
IT IS SNOW, FRIENDS. SNOW. EVERY. DAMN. DAY.
