I've already filled you all in on the unique traditions that take place when winter weather strikes in the deep South, so I won't go into all that again. If you happened to have missed that post, you can read all about it here. I did want to mention, however, that I've heard quite the wide variety of rationales for the bizarre weather we've been experiencing. Here are just a couple of the most annoying ones:
Rationale #1: The Saints won the Super Bowl, so hell has, in fact, frozen over. I happen to reject this theory, primarily because I happen to like living in the South very much and flat refuse to refer to it as hell. (don't throw this back at me in August, when the temperature exceeds 100 degrees and the humidity hits the "wet blanket" level. I'm not a big fan of sweating, and tend to get grouchy when my clothes start sticking to me.)
Rationale #2: "Must be global warming". Now mind you, that phrase has been thrown around hundreds, if not thousands of times this winter. Moreover, every single human being who utters those words thinks he or she is the only one who has come up with something so uniquely clever.
If I had a penny for every time I've heard this comment I'd be sitting on a nice little nest egg today. Generally speaking, I'm just not a big fan of snide politically-based sarcasm unless, of course, it's coming from me. Yes, that is a double standard, and that's all I'm going to say on that topic.
The bottom line here is, that this winter things have just been weird all over. We had another snow day last week. This time it snowed pretty hard all day, which was really beautiful, since down here we usually look at grey skies, brown lawns and bare trees all winter.
A fat, crimson cardinal has set up residence in my backyard. He hangs out on my back porch every morning, looking for bugs that were attracted overnight by the back porch light. He is rather anti-social, though, and won't cooperate when I try to get his picture. On the recent snow day, I spotted him sitting in the tree like a bright red dot in an expanse of white, and decided to get a photograph of him. I stalked that little critter all morning, and every time I thought I had gotten into a good position to get his photograph, off he would fly. I finally gave up and settled for a couple of photos from the back porch.
Who knows what the remainder of the winter will bring? Last night we had a hailstorm, so we're beginning to become somewhat accustomed to having ice fall from the sky in one form or another. One thing is a given though; before too long the weather will warm up, the humidity will rise, and our clothes will start sticking to us again. When that day comes, I for one will quite likely find myself flinging snide politically-based sarcasm and longing for the weird winter of 2010 again.
