January...

What is it about January that increases my distaste for winter? Is it the seemingly never-ending cold without the snow or is it the horrid "air" filling my lungs with enough crud to keep me in bed for days? Dunno, but I can't even seem to dwell on it long enough to make a decent narrative out of it. Maybe it's seeing the dirty air in combination with the dirty snow that takes any romance away that was built up around it from the preceding months. The city has dirty snow piles you'd like to wish away, but even still the suburbs have dirty snow piles that aren't melting either.

That's how I feel about January. Yeah, yeah, it's a new start to a new year, blah, blah, blah. But after dramatizing the lead up to winter after the fall, and the first snow, and snowing for Christmas, and the magic that I emotionally tie into Christmas, there seems to be a proverbial let-down thereafter. It's like after a break-up. Being in a relationship with someone, things are moving along, going well, you're enjoying yourselves...then something happens and it just ends. Just like that you go your separate ways. One day full of presents, family and cherry music then **SNAP** you wake up the next day and it's all over...Back to reality, work, picking up the toys, yadah, yadah, yadah.

I do enjoy winter sports but for a variety of reasons don't take time off work (or weekends) for them. For now, I'm content to spend my weekends lazily with the kids, enjoying the occasional hot chocolate and movie and praying for better air...and any kind of storm to clear out the putrid-smelling smog.

Then, just like after a break-up, after three or four weeks you start to feel like "yourself" again. Life moves on, turns back to "normal" and before you know it we have "clean air" and in comes February! Everywhere you look is Chocolate packaged in every shape and size and I think to myself...

"Now, all is right with the world."