Good-bye, Warm Sun

Spring in Wisconsin is a fickle beast. One day it can be in the seventies and lend itself to wearing flip-flops and leaving light fleeces in the closet, the next you can be outside in heavy coats with light gloves and hats.

Our warm, seventies-ish air is traveling east now. Perhaps at this moment a family in Ohio is excitedly preparing to sip their morning cup of coffee outside while the kids play with neighbor friends and bask in the sunlight and warmth while forever remarking how warm it is for March and how a single second of it must not be wasted.

I don't begrudge anyone else the warm weather. I miss it, but I accept that this is, and always will be, spring in Wisconsin. Warm one day, cold the next. It is what it is. And, in some ways, those glimpses of summer-- those quick flashes-- maybe help us appreciate the gift of them even more than those who live in the sameness of gorgeous weather day after day after day. Perhaps those warm weather residents think to themselves that the sun is too bright one day or the breeze too strong the next; something--anything-- to break up the sameness of sunny, seventy degree days. But not Wisconsinites. A a seventy-degree day (heck, sixty-degree!) in March in Wisconsin is something to behold.

But I hope that hypothetical family in Ohio (or wherever our warm weather has settled) does what we did yesterday: spend every available second breathing in the fresh scent of spring, confident that, even if it's only temporary for now, the weather will return, more permanently, in a short, short time.

You know you live in Wisconsin when...

anything above fifty degrees is considered "shorts" weather.

Not by me, mind you, but by the rest of my family and, apparently, the rest of the state who was sporting summer attire during the nice, but spring-like, weather over the weekend. Brrrrr!

Snowed In

Wisconsinites have been talking about our expected snowstorm for days. Usually when there's so much hype we end up getting about two flakes and rolling our eyes about how catastrophic those who predict the weather make a snowstorm sound. We live in Wisconsin, for pity's sake. We know snow.

But this morning did not disappoint. Weather experts are calling this morning's blizzard the worst snowstorm this area of the state has seen in seven years. Schools were cancelled. Joe played hooky.

Madeleine and Hank threw on their snow gear and were out flinging snow at each other by 7:30, shown here:


They were back in for oatmeal and toast by 9:00.

It's 11:30 now and it's still snowing and the kids are back out, along with the 3,700 other kids on our block. These are the days I especially love living in Wisconsin.