Hell on Earth

When you first hear that the first snow of the season is on its way in New England, you groan. The grocery stores will be mobbed, the streets will be a mess. But secretly, you’re beaming. You hope that it happens on your day off so you can enjoy it as hassle-free as possible. You imagine relaxing by a warm fire, snuggling under a blanket with a cup of cocoa and watching sheets of white fall past your window. You secretly hope work is cancelled so you can open your door and listen to the stark silence that only comes during a snowfall. You secretly can’t wait to put your boot in the fresh powder when you step outside and hear the creaking sound it makes as your foot packs it into the ground. If it’s your day off, you don’t even really mind brushing the light powder off of your car so you’ve got a head start on tomorrow morning. The flakes are still soft and light and blow back into your face like cold butterfly kisses. But it’s a cute reminder of the 4 seasons we get. That’s why we live here after all. Even shoveling, though tiring, still has some appeal. The snow is light and moves easily. Your neighbors look at you with the same feigned anger. “New England, am I right?!” they chuckle as they clean their own walk. And afterwards, you treat yourself to a cup of tea or cocoa as you watch a movie on TV.

The next day, you have to give up your shut-in status to return to work and realize how much this shit really sucks. All of that snow you shoveled to the end of your driveway is now a mountain you can’t see around. The plow came by overnight and pushed the last of the street snow into it; and by the way it’s ice now, so good luck with that. The roads are a damn mess because the mere sight of snow on the sides of the roads has people driving like they’re playing bumper cars. The walk from your car into your office could only be completed flawlessly by Kristi Yamaguchi, so you walk in the door with a bruise covering the entire left side of your body. By the time you’re off work, it’s dark and those puddles you avoided in the morning turned into black ice as soon as the sun went down an hour ago. So just as you approach your car, you slip into a lovely pose that gives you a matching bruise for your right side. Try to avoid the jackass in the SUV who thinks he’s immune to ice because he and that light pole ahead have a hot date.

The next day, you realize the error of your ways yesterday, wake up even earlier and realize how much this shit really sucks. The snow that was once a light powder kissing you on the face two days ago has now packed itself into a heavy, immovable bastard. The top coating is pure ice and any mistakes you made in shoveling are now permanent fixtures on your sidewalk and driveway until the sun or warm rain comes along and mercifully melts them away. At work, someone realized the high price they’d have to pay with an entire workforce of people slipping on ice twice a day, so they threw some salt down this morning. But the bottom of your nice work pants are now white and being withered away along with your spirit. You try to stop at any and every gas station, bodega, even toy stores on the way home hoping they sell salt to correct your own mistakes at home, but the most precious commodity in the world right now is salt and no one has a single grain. You break your plastic shovel trying to chip apart the ice and cry yourself to sleep.

The next day, you wake up even earlier because you’ve fully accepted how much this shit really sucks. You pull open the curtains to address the white menace covering your life with misery outside when suddenly…a flake. “No…that couldn’t have been a flake.” You think to yourself, “No one told me about a–” another one unmistakably falls past your window. You storm to the television and turn on the news as a peppy weatherman tells you how in the southernmost part of the state, it’s a complete white out and it should hit you full force just in time for your fucking commute. “Are you fucking serious? You couldn’t even wait for the other snow to melt before you came back? What am I supposed to do? Just shovel around the damn ice that’s still here? Is that what you want? Is this how we’re doing things now?” It’s here that you realize you’re no longer thinking, but screaming at…anyone really; the weatherman with his smile and computer graphics that show at least two more snowfalls in the next 7 days, the sky, yourself for actually having that spring in your step the first time the snow fell. You feel like the snow saw the spring in your step and thought it was welcome back over and over. You did this with your childlike whimsy! You’ve done a snow dance, pleased the snow gods and now you must deal with their horrible, horrible gift of thanks for the next 3 months. Dammit. Who needs 4 seasons?

Day One

I won’t even comment on the fact that these are two different gyms.

This image has been up and down my Facebook timeline for the last week. It’s funny. It’s also very true if you’ve ever been to a gym on the weeks leading up to Christmas and after New Year’s Day. I just hate when people get uppity about the truthfulness of it. Some fitness nuts on my timeline have reposted the picture saying, “I’ve been hitting the gym all year! It’s about commitment people! Not just a stupid resolution!”

Good for you. Seriously, that’s really great. Do you want a cookie? Probably not because you’re on your fitness game and shit. That would throw you off and you’re beyond temptation by now. But some of us aren’t. Some of us really struggle with clean eating and fitness. But we’re trying. And what better way to start than when the year rolls over into the next one? How did you start? Was it cold turkey? Did you backslide a bunch of times? Was it a New Year’s resolution that started exactly on January 1st or did you open up the gym membership, walk out the door and not look back until you had a burst of inspiration on a random day like May 4th? Whatever it was, whenever it was, most of us have a day where we decide “no more.” Whether it be with smoking, drinking to excess, sex with a regrettable ex or going back to school. January 1st gives us a clean date to start anew.

I don’t really do resolutions myself, per se, but I respect the process. Who am I to judge the people who chose the most popular day of the year to change their lives? Frankly, what better time is there to lose weight? It’s a really motivating time on the 1st. Gyms are offering discounted memberships and because the place is so packed, you’ll have no shortage of gym buddies to inspire and encourage you to go. Some of us will fall off that wagon, but I have no idea why that’s so funny to some people. Because some of us will make it. We’ll post our progress and tweet every mile run. And then we’ll post this same picture with mocking next year because we’ll forget that we had to start too.

But yesterday and today and tomorrow and August 17th, we’re starting. And if you don’t like it, eat a fucking cookie.