Just like that, and in a fashion true to Minnesota and her inconsistencies, the weather has made me a liar.
I spoke yesterday – to anyone who would listen, frankly – about my feelings regarding the turning of the seasons, of the darkening skies, of the fact that the time we will spend naked between now and, say, May, has dwindled dramatically.
The temperature at the bus stop yesterday, after all, was 44 degrees. Enough to get anyone excited.
Today’s rather non-autumnal temperature?
74.
It is here, by the way, that I should interject with a dramatic retelling of the blizzard of Some Much Earlier Year, wherein people, caught unaware by the storm, were forced to take refuge in the interior of oxen and those trapped in houses by unbudge-able doors were compelled to ration their chewing tobaccy, harsh times calling for harsh measures.
Shh. You hear that?
Someone has begun to hum The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
It is a fact of life in these here parts that we are contractually obligated to discuss the weather (you’ll find it sandwiched there between the lines specifying that Cream of Mushroom soups must be in the pantry at all times and the part about all carbonated beverages being referred to as “pop”).
Look: when you’re subjected to a hundred-degree temperature differential in the course of a year, you’re allowed a certain amount of weather-related obsession.
Not to mention that, you know, it’s part of the contract.