Winter ~ Blog About It

This year, one of the Challenges I signed up for is Blog All About It, hosted by The Herd Presents. The guideline is basically a blogging prompt challenge. Each month there’s a different prompt that you can interpret as you’d like then create a blog post around it. The 2018 list of prompts can be seen here on my Challenge Page. I will be posting for this Challenge on the 2nd Saturday of each month.

Why did I choose this Challenge? Well, if you have followed this blog, you know that I love Challenges, even though I may not complete all the ones I sign up for. I just find it to be fun. Another reason I decided to do this Challenge, is that I realized it has been ages since I have actually blogged, other than posting reviews, interviews, guest posts, giveaways, etc. Over the past few years, being busy organizing VBTs, I have slacked off with one of the main reasons I joined the Book Blogging Community. At the time, I told myself that I would create a blog just as a way to keep track of the books I read with a few notes on the specific titles. I was very lucky that I met Vicki from I’d Rather Be At The Beach who took me under her wing, mentored me and answered all my questions. I went back through my posts to see how it all began in 2009 with my first post, which can be seen here. And 8½ years later, I still thoroughly enjoy being part of this community.

Last Thursday, the East Coast had a bombogenesis! I have lived in New England my entire life and had never heard of this meteorological term, however, now that I have experienced it, I’m good!

As I sat on the couch reading, listening to the hurricane force winds and occasionally looking out the window watching the “Blizzard of 2018” dropping 12″+ of snow, I started thinking about how I felt about Winter from years past and what I thought about it now.

As a child, I remember sitting on the couch while it snowed, and waiting anxiously to see if the local news would announce that school would be canceled for the following day. It didn’t matter if there were a few inches or a few feet of snow or how cold it was, I was already making plans. Fun plans that would last hours or even days. As I look back, and maybe it was just a child’s perception, it seemed like we had more snow “back in the day”.

One of my no school, exciting Winter adventures, depending on the time of a storm, would be to go with my Dad as he plowed. I loved seeing how tall the mounds of snow he could make with that plow. And of course, he would always make the tallest one on our property. Does anyone remember the round red “flying saucers”? My sister, the neighborhood kids and I would spend hours going down that snow pile on our saucers.

We would alternate sliding down that man-made hill to make forts and snowmen in our yards, and of course, snowball fights. Hours and hours outside playing never even caring about the cold temperatures. We wanted to have fun every single second of that snow day!

Things have definitely changed over the years. I now watch the news and dread it if that 4 letter word, SNOW, is mentioned. I’ll admit, it is pretty when it does snow and I’m inside nice and warm, but those feelings last only a couple of hours.

I really don’t even have to listen to the weather reports anymore, I have my own personal weather barometer…..my arthritic bones. I have the ability to predict changes in the weather 2 days before it happens. The thing that I find funny is that I will tell my husband about my prediction in the coming days, and he usually comes back with “no it’s not, they (the weather people) are saying no precipitation.” I love saying, I TOLD YOU SO after the fact!

Not only am I not a fan of the snow storms of Winter, as I was as a child, this past week here in New England, it has been bitterly cold, with highs of 5-10 degrees and that is without the wind chill factor.

I also have a tremendous fear of going outside and falling when there is snow on the ground and it’s slippery. My last back surgical procedure was in 2014, a 3 consecutive day operation, being placed in a medically induced coma the latter 2 days, the placement of extensive hardware and months of rehabilitation, an operation that I would never want to go through again. To make it even scarier, on one of my post-op visits, the surgeon warned me and strongly suggested and recommended that I do not take the chance of going outside and risk falling especially since he did find some fractures from previous falls during the operation.

Instead of looking forward to being outside as a child, I now tend to hibernate as an adult. The only positive aspect of Winter, that I can think of, is being on the couch or in my recliner, a warm blanket, a hot cup of coffee and a great read! Now that is the type of Winter activity I can handle!!!

I keep trying to convince myself that Spring is just around the corner but not doing a very good job at it, when realistically I know we have a few more months of Winter. Good thing I have a huge TBR pile, probably higher than the snow mounds my Father would make with his plow!!!

I would love to hear your thoughts on Winter, now and when you were a child!