Springing to spring

My husband says I complain too much about winter, and he's absolutely right. His solution: Let's move back to Puerto Rico. But given that I now have an actual job (and one that I absolutely love) at my small college on the hill, that's not a practicable solution for now.

Perhaps someday I'll be famous enough that I can do half the year in the States and half the year in Puerto Rico, as some renowned professors here do (they don't live the other half of the year in Puerto Rico, of course, but somewhere else). How nice it would be to spend the worst part of the winter (basically all of January and February) admiring the crystalline green waters of the Caribbean Sea, and feeling the warm breezes of my island. Sigh...

For now, alas, that's just wishful thinking. And it's not just the jobs that keep us here. Although both my husband and I would love to go to Puerto Rico right now, and I have two weeks of Spring Break coming up, there's no one to take care of Rusty (who, as most of you know, failed doggy day care at the vet's). It's not that we can't kennel him, but that every time we've done so he's been so depressed and traumatized that we swore we wouldn't do it again.

My mother-in-law used to stay in our house to care for him and the other furry grandchildren, but her health no longer permits her to do so. Thus, the only way for us to travel is to go in the heat of summer when we can drop off the dogs at my in-laws' place in West Virginia, which the dogs see as their personal Doggy Summer Camp.

Thus, for now, I can't escape winter and must put up with it, even if I do so rather ungraciously, especially since the winters in Ohio seem to be endless. Sometimes it feels like winter here is basically a year-long season, except for a few exceptionally hot days in the summers.

While I had hoped for a milder February and had believed in Buckeye Chuck's prediction that spring would come early, the Ohio groundhog was dead wrong and his Pennsylvania cousin nailed it when he said we wouldn't see spring until March was well into its days. Buckeye Chuck, for one, didn't predict the storm we had last week, which forced me to come up early to the little apartment in the woods, and another one this week, which shooed me out of my comfortable house in the small city just last evening.

Given dire predictions of up to 8 inches of snow today, I fixed an early dinner for us and after listening to the weather forecast I rushed to pack my sundry totes and the dogs into the car and drove up. That was after my husband and I agreed that it was better to drive in the dark in good weather than to drive on bad roads during daylight. I was actually surprised that the traffic coming up here at 6:30 last night was relatively heavy, so that I was never the only car on the road (as I was once last year when I drove up, unwittingly, in a snow storm).

While it snowed a bit last night, the storm hasn't hit here yet but the roads are slushy and slippery and basically awash in dirty, thawing snow. When the dogs and I got back from our abbreviated walk (only 1.5 miles today), I had to dry them off and clean all the dirty slush from their undersides. I bet some people marvel that I walk these dogs in almost any kind of weather.

Now we're back inside, warm and cozy in the little apartment in the woods, which needless to say stays much warmer than our large house in the small city. The dogs are already snoozing away in their appointed places and I'm getting ready to do school work and then get back to my dissertation before heading out once more to meetings with colleagues and students.

There's only 3 days left to February, which has basically been an extended mirror of January, and although I continually chastise myself for "wishing my life away," I can't wait for this month to end and am not appreciating this extra day of this leap year.

Still, I remind myself continually that spring is unstoppable, even if it takes so darn long to make it here in Ohio. They say spring, like hope, springs eternal. I just wish it sprung (or sprinted, actually) a little faster here.