Dear Blog Reader
I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. I hope that you did not succumb to the intense pressure of last week to the warm and balmy February temperatures. I saw some of you slipping out to the park in shirt sleeves. Some of you even let your children out to play in the grass and on playgrounds around central Indiana. I wrote this paragraph three weeks ago. Pretty funny considering the weather roller coaster we have been on since.
Science really has encouraged us to slip the axioms that have built civilizations through out the millennia. "Ten pounds of coat prevention until May 15th is worth 100 lbs of mustard poultice cure until your fever breaks and Lassie runs to get Doc Johnson." No, now we treat our foolishness with a round of Z pack and a couple of aspirin.
Case in point; I recently changed jobs and moved from having an office to working in a cube. This is fine. I am office style agnostic. I can adjust. I have a white noise machine (quickly purchased after listening to a heated phone debate about whose familial responsibility it was to pick up rat poison on the way home. TMI!) However, in these closer quarters, I have noticed that this lack of basic respect for the laws that govern the application and removal of flannel sheets has permeated the office space in which I work.
One person in our block of cubes sounds like they escaped from a TB ward. They are obviously a 300 Egyptian cotton thread count person. They felt the warm temperatures of the last week of February; took off the flannels because it was "too hot" (think whiney voice.) They probably exacerbated their exposure and went outside without a hat as the temps broached the 70 degree mark. Obviously, they paid the price for their transgressions and came down sick. Sure it felt warm but the calendar still reads FeBRRRRRRRRRuary. The Romans knew how to name their months. Put a little reminder in there that February is cold, leave the flannel sheets on Octavius, and for goodness sake stay away from the Egyptian cotton until June and stay away from hot Egyptian queens - always.
As I said, I wrote that first paragraph three weeks ago. Since then we have had two more rounds of freezing weather and yesterday we were experiencing a french toast event (get your milk, bread, and eggs and hunker down.) You're sad about your magnolia trees getting frozen; all of their beautiful white blooms blackened by a few days of freezing weather. Please do not be surprised by this people. Magnolia trees were put in zone 5 for the specific purpose to remind us what happens when we get too exuberant about a few days of good weather before Memorial Day.
With magnolia trees the average is about one spectacular white and pink blossomed year in three. They get out there and really show off once every three years; them with all their fancy blooms in early March and it works out. The home owner is the envy of the neighborhood. Their magnolia in fabulous bloom providing the perfect backdrop for the yard of the month sign. We are the same. We will get out there in all of our glory. You sport your bare heads and naked arms. Some of you will even wear shorts and start working on a little bit of a tan and everything will work out perfectly for you. You won't catch a cold. You won't expose your coworkers to the green viral miasma as it floats above your cubicle.
You will be fine every once in a while. Then we have a year like 2017. Sixty-eight degrees and get out the wife beater and head for the beach only to be faced with not one but three cold snaps. Cold snaps that makes old Mr. Groundhog look like the smartest varmit on the back 40. Cold snaps that will send you running home getting the flannels out of the linen closet quietly trying to sneak them back on before the laws of nature kick in and you are laid low with that stuffy red nose, and viral hack slowly turning itself into bronchitis.
It is sad. We are so ready for warm weather. We suffer from our lack of vitamin D. We need to uncover our arms and sweat a little. It isn't as sad as say in New England where they are paying for early spring-itis and the fact that they are home to the Patriots. So it could be worse.
Go ahead, repent. Get the flannels back out we still have 60 days before they can be safely put away. And what will you do if it warms up a little bit? Just open the window but stay hunkered down under those flannels.
Take care
Roger
