Snow and Ice

I love snow. It's cold but not wet, it muffles everything, it makes small children happy, it sometimes cancels engagements that I didn't want to engage, and it's just all-around good fun. I don't mind snow at all. I even don't really mind missing engagements that I did want to engage.

On the other hand, I hate melting snow. It's wet and cold, it makes mud, it freezes into ice, it's a pain in the ass to shovel, and it gets dirty and ugly. If snow would simply snow, stay cold for a while to look attractive, and then spontaneously sublimate into the atmosphere, that would be the best of all possible worlds.

And I really hate ice. It's almost impossible to shovel, makes things dangerous, and isn't attractive at all. If I could just stay inside and never go anywhere, ice would be okay, but since it seems to sense when I need to go out and then get worse, I'm against it.

You might be able to guess that I live on the East Coast, where I get a wonderful variety of weather, and in February I often get some snow, but nearly always tempered by ice, sleet, rain, and other unpleasantness. I grieve for the people in New York (state) who are buried under seventeen feet of snow, but I sometimes wonder whether I wouldn't prefer that. I like the cold, I like snow, and while the amount they've been getting recently has been perhaps a bit much, I'm not sure I'd begrudge nature; after all, it's the weather of the region. I can't say that I begrudge nature my current weather either, but I wish for change.

I suppose the lesson of this rumination is that no one is happy with what they have, and you probably should be. Or maybe that there are pros and cons to every situation, no matter how unpleasant. Or perhaps that I'm lucky to not be dead. But all of these lessons are boring. My current dilemma is whether 'tis better to shovel snow before an ice storm when it's easier to shovel snow, or whether to leave the snow on the ground in the hope that it will make the ice easier to remove eventually. Since one option involves going out and doing something and the other involves waiting, I think I can guess which way I'll be leaning.