To Heck with Jack Frost

Greetings and welcome to another Iowa winter! I know most of you are shaking your heads and spewing curse words at me—HEY, I feel your pain! I like Iowa winters as much as I like annual dental checkups. They both hurt, and the thought of them elicit a sense of doom, gloom and dread. Yet here we are, still here after all these years. How many times have you thought about moving to a warmer location? Dream on, Iowans…

We live here because we like having different seasons—each one of the three (four, if you count spring) helps us appreciate all the different changes we encounter. I don’t count spring anymore, because quite frankly, I think it’s left the building. Spring skips Iowa—it goes straight from winter to summer. Where else can you have 20 degrees and snow one day, and sunny skies and 75 the next day?

At any rate, we are talking about winter and snow and ice and sleet. After you add the sand and the salt, our streets become a 7 Layer Salad of sludge. There are plenty of reasons to hate Iowa winters and I will gladly list my Top 10 reasons:

10. Snowblowers that blow snow back in your face—I hate that!

9. Snowplows that block your driveway with mammoth chunks of ice—thanks a lot!

8. Taking out the trash and recycle bin and falling on your ass because of that ice patch

7. People who forget how to drive in winter and rear-end you

6. Morons in 4x4’s who think they can defy physics. Yup, brakes are overrated-driver, meet ditch…

5. Getting out of bed—can’t we be like bears and hibernate?

4. Wind Chill—talk about insult to injury—why do we have to endure this cruel add-on?

3. Shopping – holiday shoppers can be rude, crude and violent. Is that overpriced Cabbage Patch Elmo whatchamacallit worth trampling each other over?

2. It’s dark out at 5:00! If winter isn’t depressing enough, let’s make everything darker and colder for most of the day--brilliant!

1. Ice – Snow is bad enough, but we seem to get more than our fair share of ice. Nothing screams panic attack quite like your car sliding downhill sideways—whoohooo!
Now don’t get me wrong—there are a few things that are good about winter in Iowa. I don’t want to be a negative nelly. In winter, it is acceptable to lie around the house all weekend and watch football on TV. You also don’t have to mow the lawn and pick up dog poo. Some of us put on a little extra weight, you know, as insulation to, ahem, protect us from the cold. Underneath all the layers of clothing and road salt, ARE reasons to like winter—you just gotta dig through the slushy muck to find them.