The poor camel

Have you ever felt like you’ve been nice for too long? Going to the wedding of someone you don’t like, for example. By the end of the evening, you’ve smiled the last fake smile you can grind into your teeth. You’ve fake-hugged the bride or groom one time too many, the cake was awful and you don’t even like weddings.

Or maybe you have spent Christmas Day with people who do not like you. You sit idly on the couch smiling with thin, drawn lips at everyone as they come and go and pretending it doesn't bother you. All the while you nibble on Beer Nuts or salty cocktail peanuts, too bored to bother getting up to grab a life-saving glass of water, gin, beer or kerosene.

If you can relate to the idea of being nice for too long, then you know what I’m saying about this winter. Apparently I am not suited for living in the northern latitudes, so my irrational dream of retiring as an extremely old woman in the Scottish Highlands has now officially had its head bashed in at the bottom of a rocky ravine.

It’s never going to happen.

I’m not that far north now, you see. Not even close. But if we’ve had sunshine, I’ve forgotten about it. I think we have. I think there’s a world without snow on the ground. I have a friend on Facebook who is raising baby chicks and planting a garden. I follow a blog of some woman who takes photos of her children daily and they are all in tank tops and flip flops. (oh, look! A rhyme!)

Somewhere there are people drinking lemonade in the sunshine in jeans and sweatshirts and bare feet because it’s only a little chilly, but the grass is soft and sweet beneath their feet. (holy crap! I rhymed again. I promise this is not on purpose; it is innate, pure talent seeping through my fingertips onto the keyboard.)

How am I supposed to continue my gripe against winter if I am amusing myself with these unexpected rhymes?

Let me tell you that I don’t know what kind of heavy narcotics I may have been given last night unbeknownst to my Self. I might have had a pretty powerful drug-fueled dream because when I looked out the dining room window this morning and saw snow I was disappointed.

You know the sort of disappointed I mean? Like when you are anxiously awaiting a phone call and you pick it up and it’s only the Republican National Convention Association for the 15th time? It was worse than that.

Maybe it was like the disappointment you feel when you pick up your best friend’s birthday cake and instead of saying 'happy birthday to my best friend,' it says 'hippy birth day to my brest friend.'

That sort of thing confuses everyone and could be mistaken for an insult or maybe a proposition, but still that isn’t how I felt this morning.

I looked outside. I saw snow. And something inside me caved in on itself. I must have had a very convincing dream last night that it was actually springtime or something closely resembling springtime.

I tell you! I looked outside and my stomach flipped. I looked outside and I had to look again because I couldn’t believe there was snow on the ground. It was that unreal.

That's when the last straw landed on the camel.