It was roughly four years ago that I admitted to the world - via an opinion piece not unlike this one - that I thought spring is a wildly overrated season. Unpredictable weather, mud, allergies, doing your taxes - none of it is that enjoyable.
Four years later, I am here to say my opinion on the matter has not changed one bit.
As I write this, it’s roughly 40 degrees and raining fairly hard outside my window. The day before, it snowed. A week before that, it was almost 60 degrees.
It is that inconsistency of spring that bugs me the most. Do I need a coat today, and if so how thick of a coat? Should my son wear his rain boots to day care? Should we have the heat on or the air conditioning?
I kind of hate it.
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Of course other things like - oh, I don’t know - developing seasonal allergies in your early 30s can be deemed a good reason to be somewhat “over” the season before it really begins, even though it technically began a month ago. Do you see the problem here?
Other things like the fact that I’ve already killed a hornet and/or wasp this year, that there have been a handful of days where there are literal clouds of gnats in my driveway and that ticks are out in droves at the hunting land, even though it is by no means warm, certainly play a role in my feelings as well.
Maybe I’m too negative in this rant. Of course, it could be worse. The snow is all gone, my basement hasn’t flooded, everyone here is relatively healthy despite allergies and both the furnace and air conditioner still work, so whichever I need on a given spring day is available to me.
Really, the main reason I’m writing this is that the last time I wrote a piece like this, we began a lovely stretch of weather in the lakes area the day the column was published. Maybe I’m not-so-secretly wondering if I have some degree of control over the weather.
Wouldn’t that be cool? More than anything, I think I’m just ready to go to some baseball games and track meets on a more regular basis.
I don’t consider myself superstitious - far from it, really - but let’s just see what happens now. If the weather improves rapidly, feel free to thank me next time you see me.
Dan Determan may be reached at 218-855-5879 or dan.determan@pineandlakes.com. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/@PEJ_Dan.
