Things I hate about winter:
Driving on slippery streets.
Sweeping snow off my car.
Scraping the frost off of my car windows.
Sitting in a cold car and driving.
Other drivers.
Slippery sidewalks.
Everything gets so much more difficult outside (no throwing on your shoes, grabbing your purse, and heading out the door).
No green (except evergreens, and they’re different).
Chapped hands and lips.
Dry, itchy skin.
Soakers. (When you step in a puddle in your stockinged feet in the house.)
No spending time outside just to be out in the fresh air and sunshine.
Short days.
Long nights.
Things I love about winter:
Wearing big, thick, woolly clothing.
An excuse to drink a hot chocolate first thing at work every morning.
Baking is strongly encouraged.
Warming my feet on my portable space heater.
Christmas lights.
Hoar frost covering everything in the morning.
The soft quiet of a city that has just had a foot of snow.
Walking on a bright, sparkly morning.
The look of a brilliantly cold, hard night sky full of stars.
Hot baths.
Sleeping with many quilts on the bed.
Nice cold bedrooms.
Anyone else want to share what they hate and love about winter? (Please include both in your post - it’s too early in the season to be all negative.)
Driving in snow, ice, slickness, whatever totally makes me nervous!
Dampus being icy and making it hard to make it to class
Cold wind
My car takes for freaking ever to warm up
My roommate and I can’t afford much in the way of heat
It gets dark at like 5pm
I work retail and winter = Christmas shoppers
Love:
The way it looks outside after a good snowfall before anyone’s driven through or trampled it
Holidays with my family are fun
Driving around looking at Christmas lights
The fact I can still talk my parents in to putting the tree up (maybe not this year since I don’t get the whole month off…sadness)
Getting to wear cool scarves and my bitchin pea coat
I get lots of time off school for winter break…just too bad I don’t get to spend it at home this year…stupid job
Things I hate about winter: Just about everything.
Things I like about winter: Talking to relatives on the phone and listening to them complain about the freezing sleet and biting winds, then mentioning how nice the trade winds sound blowing through the palms outside my window.
On the contrary, it’s precisely because it’s so early in the season that I’m inclined to be negative! We aren’t supposed to have a foot of snow and -20 before my birthday. It’s scarcely November for crying out loud.
But what I like is taking a deep breath of cold, cold, crisp, clean air.
– I’m cold all the time. Comes from being scrawny, or so I’m told. The cold seems to set into my bones and I just can’t get warm.
–Flu season. I’ll always get sick. With me working with the public and Hubby working in a prison, I’m in the CDC’s category of “Completely Fucked.”
– Ice. I’m as clumsy as an ox wearing ollerskates on perfectly dry pavement, let alone one sheeted in ice.
– The holiday insanity. While I’m not necessarily subject to it because I do almost all of my shopping online, the stores around here get brutal during the holiday season. You can almost guarantee that you’ll see some violence over the “must have” item of the year if you’re foolish enough to wander into a store after December 1st. (Has a lot to do with being the only real town within a 50 mile radius.)
– Seasonal affect. I think I do suffer from a touch of it. I get hungry to see growing things and bunny rabbits. Everything looks so dreary and lifeless.
Wind chill.
Driving on ice.
Driving in snowstorms.
Forgetting to plug in the block heater.
Scraping the car off in the morning.
Shovelling the sidewalk.
People who don’t shovel their sidewalk.
Like:
Stepping outside at night when a gentle snow is falling and listening to the quiet.
Looking at the Christmas lights on all the houses.
The way the snow reflects the moonlight, making it bright at night.
A fresh snowfall, unmarked by footprints or tire tracks.
Seeing a cardinal or blue jay–they add a little colour at a time when the world seems to be just white, black, grey, and brown.
Sitting in my favourite armchair while smoking my pipe, sipping a single-malt, enjoying a good book, and listening to jazz; while it howls up a storm outside.
Love: skiing, and all things related to it, including driving in the snow, shoveling snow, blowing snow, laughing at the a-hole tourists stuck in the snow, helping the cute a-hole single girly tourists out of the snow with my Jeep (if it doesn’t break down), early happy hour, late happy hour, skier hour, snowball fights, skiing.
Hate:
being cold
cold hands
frozen feet
(did I mention I have bad circulation? Low blood pressure sucks for cold)
that, because it’s cold, I have to blow-dry my hair; otherwise my ears catch all kinds of nasty
slippery roads
people who try to drive at normal speed in bad weather conditions
and who end up doing a twirly and stopping with their car across the road, like that idiot this morning (nobody got hurt)
all those conversations about it being cold (no shit, it’s called winter, ma’am, and yes it was this cold last year)
being sleepy (apparently I’m half-bear, half-hen… wonder if that’s where Blizzard got the idea for moonkin, someone like me)
Love:
snow
ice skating. I can’t do any figures, but I still like it.
watching snow fall from inside a cozy place
playing with snow
it’s fluffy!
skiing, which I haven’t been able to do in too-long but this year I’m going to be in Switzerland so by Jove I will!
frozen water (rivers, lakes)
icicles
licking icicles
rainbows caused on the wall by sunlight hitting icicles
having an excuse to sleep under a zillion blankets. For some reason I can’t fall asleep with no weight on me unless it’s over 40C, so in the summer people look at me funny (can we get a smiley that doesn’t look like it’s Monica Lewinsky?)
being able to keep stuff cold just by leaving it in the balcony
winter foods. In Mafalda’s immortal words “who but you, Mother, makes soup in the summer?” Well, unlike Mafalda I do like soup, and beans, and other stuffs that are better in the winter
not having a conflict between leaving chocolate outside (in which case it tries to melt into the aluminium paper, yuck) or putting it in the fridge (which I’m sure is a sin), like I do in the summer
Hate
-Getting off at work and the sun had already set 2 hours ago.
-Dreary gray days
-Mud getting everywhere (it doesn’t snow where I live)
-Christmas Shopping
-No beach/river/lake/waterpark fun
-Heavy winter clothes (having to lug them around)
Love
-Football Games
-Basketball Season
-Not having to cut grass or pull weeds
-Heavy winter clothes. It is fun to take a walk on a cold day (around here a day in the 20’s) and see if you can pick the right gear do it with out getting wet or uncomfortable.
-Camping in the cold- see above
HATE:
Snowbirds.
The holiday season.
Vacationers.
The relatively short duration of the whole thing.
LOVE:
Highs in the 70s. It’s sooo nice after summer to open my doors and windows.
Lower humidity (down into the 50 - 70% range). I can breathe again!
Shorter days, longer nights. In the depths of summer, it’s light from 5a to 9p quite often.
Clear skies at night.
Less frequent (and less severe) storms.
Sunny days that don’t make me scuttle back into the house.
THINGS I’VE NEVER EXPERIENCED THAT ARE USUALLY WINTER-ASSOCIATED:
Snow.
Ice.
Driving in either of those.
Sustained temperatures below 40 – usually rarely below 50, but we’ve had a couple winters go down that far, but never for more than a week at a stretch. I think the lowest I’ve been around for was 29, but that was just for one day.
Sustained humidity levels below 50%.
Long-term leafless trees – ours drop (still green, often) in February and grow in by March.
I love that it’s so much easier to sleep in winter because the nights are so much cooler. But, of course, it’s much harder to get up on those dark June/July mornings.
Other people whining that it’s really friggin’ cold
Knowing that, in a few months, the bugs won’t all be dead
Knowing that this winter, as every winter, I will buy an ice scraper and place it in my trunk, where it will disappear into that mystic space-time vortex normally reserved for remote controls and The Other Sock
All told, winter is a pretty good package deal for me. I just wish I could spend more of it back in upstate New York, where winter lets you know it means business.
Temperatures below -30
Big puddles of slush
People who get angry about cold in January
Love:
Snow. Big piles of snow
Lots of hot chocolate and hot cider
A properly icy bedroom, with snow blowing in the window
Knowing that there aren’t any mosquitoes
All the loud, annoying people don’t hang out in the street
The way the ice outlines branches
Blue shadows on snow, on a bright, sunny, cold day
Getting to wear long coats and pretty scarves
Being able to cool down properly if I overheat
I love winter. Hurry up, winter! I want snow!
The good stuff;
-crisp, clear days-with ice-blue skies and snow sparkling like diamonds!
-making tracks down a slope in fresh powder
-hot mulled wine after a day on the slopes
-the cool wind against your face as you plunge down the slope
-spruce trees under fresh snow
-a crackling, roaring fire
-Christmas lights against the dark
Now the bad stuff;
-trying to start your car-and the battery dies
-ice covered sidewalks
-gray skies…and short days
But Winter is generally wonderful!
Cold - I hate the cold. I feel like I’ll never be warm again. “Wind chill” sucks. It just sucks.
Ice - I hate driving in GOOD weather. Winter weather bites.
Dark - there isn’t enough sunlight during the day anymore. I get depressed.
Expense - the holidays get expensive. I feel bad when I can’t get everything for everyone that I want.
Grey - everything turns grey. The snow on the side of the streets gets almost black and looks icky for months.
Good stuff:
Lights - the Christmas lights. It makes me happy inside.
Decorations - I love looking at Christmas decorations. It makes me smile.
Snow - it’s so pretty when it first falls and until someone walks in it.
Dog - my dog loves the snow. When he plays, it makes me laugh.
Family - I love my family and love spending time with them. My inlaws are fantastic people as are my family.
Food - there’s a no brainer.
Gifts - I enjoy giving the gifts I can and enjoy it when people like them. I like making people happy.
Music - yeah, it’s corny, but I love Christmas music. Especially Snoopy and the Red Baron - I know that’s not the name of the song - I forget it’s real name - it isn’t Christmas until I hear that song.
Night time - like spoons said, “The way the snow reflects the moonlight, making it bright at night.”
TV - I love the Heat Miser, Frosty, Rudolph, Snoopy, etc. I really do! I’m just a big goofy kid at heart I suppose - for Christmas a couple years ago my brother got me all the Rankin Bass videotapes. And let’s not forget the movies - White Christmas, all the specials - I can guarantee a sappy cry every night of the week.
smiley that doesn’t look like it’s Monica Lewinsky?)
