Friday, February 03, 2012

flip flop

In my early years here, in Wisconsin, I often got the question – oh, you’re from Poland... is it as cold there as it is here?
Colder, I’d say.
Really? What’s the winter low?
Oh, not as low as here...
But you said...
It just feels colder. Damp, prickly cold, the kind of cold that makes your bones shiver.

I rarely feel that kind of cold in Madison. But I felt it today.

It seems that we’ve traded places: Madison was like Bialystok (a Polish city worst hit by a vicious cold front passing through Eastern Europe) and Bialystok was like Madison.


Early today, there were the fog alerts. Dense, soupy – words that make you think of towels soaked in cold pea porridge. But by the time I set out for campus, the alerts are over and done with. What remains is the gray.

Lake Mendota never looked less... approachable.


DSC00048


No matter. It’s February. And the weekend. And I have chicken soup on the stove and the idea that we’ll be chopping down some invasives in the back of the farmette once the weather improves and in case all this soupy wetness is the way it’s going to be until April – well, that’s a good excuse to get away. And I will.

But not just yet. February is, this year, a stick it out at home month for me. I like home. Bathed in sunshine home. No, not true. Just home.