I really think I'm living at the wrong end of the world, and much too close to the north pole. I hate winter. Snow and cold annoy the hell out of me. I'd like to be able to leave the windows open all year round and walk outside in my bare feet whenever the mood hits me and sit in the sun all afternoon. But it's January, so everything is closed up tight and insulated and weather stripped and there's ice on the driveway and snow clouds in the sky and vitamin D supplements for breakfast.

I stay warm by cranking up the furnace. Sometimes I even put on socks. I go from a warm house to a warmed up car to a heated workplace. The brisk walk across the parking lot is my idea of more than enough time spent braving the elements. No rosey cheeks or rudolph nose or frost bitten fingers for me, thanks. Been there and done that (we lived in the Arctic for over a decade) and I've gotten over it completely. Do not ever want to go back, even for a visit.

Probably I started hating winter from a very young age and have just never outgrown it. Our old two story farm house was heated by a wood furnace in the basement and sometimes in the morning, two floors away from it, once we crawled out from under fifty pounds of blankets, we could see our breath in the air. It felt like our feet would freeze to the floor if we didn't get moving, and shivering violently was the only way to stay alive until we could race downstairs to the kitchen and sit on a heat register and thaw ourselves out.

So my really only favorite thing about winter is seeing the end of it in the spring. Winter is something to be tolerated and endured and survived and hibernated through. I try to ignore it, and eventually it goes away.