Keep Calm, It's Only Snow.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to re-introduce you to an old nemesis---its name is winter.

And, like its siblings -- spring with its nascent greens and loamy whiffs, summer and it's steamy days, and autumns’ periwinkle skies and brilliant hues -- winter comes with its own set of signature moves.

One of these is snow.

Snow can be gentle, snow can be cruel. Sometimes it shares the stage with its evil cousins, sleet and freezing rain. Snow can screw with our plans, prevent us from moving freely about this earth and either elates us or causes great grumpiness depending on our ages and levels of agility but, in the end, it is just snow.

It appears, as the media has been warning us for several days now, we are expecting some any minute so, when I awoke today at 6, I flipped on the TV to see what was what.

The "meteorologists" (I'll believe it when I see the diplomas) in the studio, increased from one nincompoop to three, were in a frenzy. Both male nincompoops were in shirtsleeves and one was bent over the "weather desk" scribbling furiously on a pad ("milk, eggs, toilet paper, kitty litter, Altoids....") while the other was clawing at his scalp and ranting about colors on the weather map: dark blue for heavy snow, pinks for lighter snow, lavenders and white mean a wintry mix and pale yellow is for when teddy bears are expected to fall from the sky sometime this evening.

"And today's expected snowfall
totals will be..."

The female nincompoop seemed the happiest. I suspect this had more to do with her recently acquired breast implants than the weather. This particular nincompoop, who used to dress in admittedly nondescript attire, was wearing a skin tight knit dress stretched to bursting over her new upper frontal superstructure which threatened to interfere with the accuracy of the Doppler radar, the cameras and the mugs of coffee on the desk.

Can I come in yet?

They had their entire news team spread out across the state. There was no snow falling yet but the reporters looked cold and exhausted as they blathered gamely on -- for the thousandth time -- about the governor's ban on trucks, towns running out of salt but now using Mrs.Dash to pre-treat roadways as well as showing store shelves across the region stripped of everything from bread to Chapstick (even the weird green ones) as terrorized shoppers prepared for the apocalypse.

Please, let me go home!

Weather used to be weather. In the extreme, it was news...usually after we all woke up, pulled up the shades and noticed there was snow on the ground. 

Of course it's great that we now have advanced weather forecasting capabilities....getting a heads up on what's heading toward us saves lives in countless ways. But what's happening these days is madness: the coverage starting days before with footage of people buying shovels and gassing up their cars, the dramatic music, the special graphics, the abuse of the field reporters who, I fear, are left out overnight in news vans lest they miss the very first zig zag of the very first flake as it's released by a merciful God just to give these poor frozen bastards something to report on. It's too much.

At least for me.

There's other stuff going on in the world today. Here in the United States, I'm sure Joe Biden is saying something idiotic, dancing was banned at a recent state dinner so as not to embarrass the French president because he had no dance partner while, back at home, he was not embarrassed at all by a scandal regarding his mistress and his girlfriend, and Jennifer Aniston just turned 45.

"As long as the snow's not gay,
it's fine with me!"

On the Olympic front, snow boarders are wallowing in a melting half pipe, Vladimir Putin is wearing a new mock turtleneck and looking inscrutable as he claps soundlessly from the stands in Sochi, and American lugers are posting videos of themselves on Twitter twerking with their medals.*

And, oh yes, there's war, pestilence, and poverty happening, too.

Well, the snow has begun. I have no plans to turn on the TV. I do not wish to see my weather team having coronaries or strokes from excitement. Instead, I'll glance out the window now and then to see how much we're getting, abstain from driving on slick roads because I prefer not to be involved in an accident as well as -- in my own small way -- make it easier for emergency personnel and, in general, use something called common sense.*

Happy snow day, dear friends

*Totally true.
**Such as it is.

America's favorite salt substitute! If it's good on steamed veggies, why not
try it on the roads.