Seasons

I hate the cycle of the year. At the beginning of the year, it's really cold, and the days are short, not to mention January 1st marks the anniversary of my sister's death. By February, it's still really cold, but the daylight seems to stick around a little later. In March, Spring seems to be playing tug-of-war with Winter. I'm not sure how they decide when to start Daylight Saving Time anymore, sometimes it starts in March, but it seems like there has been once in the past couple of years since they started the new system that they started it on the first Saturday of April. Anyway, Daylight Saving Time is good. Here in Kentucky, I think the threat of wintery precip isn't totally over until mid-May. Late June marks the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. While it is something to celebrate, I also can't help but think that the days can only get shorter from there. It gets really freakin' hot, which isn't good, but it beats the icy Hell of Winter. Football starts in August, and to me, football marks the beginning of the end of the year. Eventually, the days get shorter and colder. Falling back to Daylight Standard Time means it gets dark by 5:30pm. Bummer. Then comes my least favorite time of the year, the Thanksgiving/Christmas season. It's a time to fake being jolly when everything seems to die. It's also the only time in recent years when a good number of people are able to find employment, albeit temporary, thanks to it being the biggest shopping season. Ugh. The only good thing I can say about that period is that the Winter Solstice marks the shortest day of the year, so the days can only get longer from there. Granted, you still have to put up with January and February, but it gives some glimmer of hope. Repeat.

While I dread the beginning of the football season, I don't mind the Super Bowl sometimes because it means we're closer to Spring. I don't watch a lot of basketball either, but March Madness means that Spring has sprung, or is about to at least.

All four of my immediate family's birthdays fall between May and August, plus there's Mother's Day and Father's Day, so my parents get two additional special days. Mother's Day is always way too close to my brother's birthday, occasionally even falling on the same day.

One of the few good bits of advice my dad ever gave me was not to go to work when the roads are icy, unless you make more in a day than you'd pay for your car's deductible. I hate the idea of driving on ice so much that I've purposely avoided looking for work in January and February these past couple of years. It helps that in 2010 and 2011 that I accumulated enough money from working in November and December to pay the bills through January, and I make it though February thanks to my tax refund. (In 2009, I got severance checks through early February.) But the pay at Mega Lo Mart sucks so bad, and they avoid allowing overtime so much, that I don't think I'll be making that much this year. They're definitely not worth driving on ice for.

I'm really glad that I don't live any farther north than I do, but I would still like to move to some place that doesn't get much snow, or just doesn't have such drastically different seasons. One friend of mine lives in Key West, and brags about the weather a lot. I'd love to move there, but it's expensive, and work is hard to come by. He's primarily been bartending, and that's not a line of work I see myself getting into. Another acquaintance recently moved to Edinburgh, Scotland. It turns out that the weather there is probably more pleasant than you'd think. She has said that it's pretty much either Spring or Fall there, with temperatures never getting below 30 degrees Fahrenheit. She also said that the locals have warned her about the rain in the Winter being really cold, but that to her it still sounds preferable to being buried in snow.

The reason I bring all this up is because today is a warm day, and things are supposed to start cooling down, way down, tomorrow. I have enough anxiety as it is, the last thing I need is the weather making it even worse. And it's supposed to start getting really busy at work pretty soon. I was really hoping to either be in school or working somewhere else entirely by now.