Bitterchill

[kingtycoon]

Oh January. It's like a curse word really, something you spit out to announce displeasure. Also, taking this picture I can see that maybe I need to replace my electric shears because it seems I have mangy spots where it seems I'm not equally shaven. Shaven... Remember that time - we got in my car and were making our first big trip overland - we were at the truck stop in the middle of nowhere PA while I think Erinn was trying to get them to sell him beer (I don't even think it works that way in PA) and Brent was troubled by the porno magazines everywhere which I wasn't shy about investigating. "Shaved. Orientals." He said, deadpan as ever. "Couldn't they have at least make it shaven?"

But the cold is true & fierce, as ever and as ever I must bitch like a huge infant toddler. January is after Janus - right, the Roman god by way of Etruscan - two faced & of doors. When they fucked with their calendar to make their rulers seem more important - didn't they shuffle January from spring into winter? I can't remember- but also, I've been to Rome and I have to say, I think that the realities of winter & spring are lost on them. Probably most Europeans really no? It's that traitorous Jet Stream stealing the warm and giving it to them! Anyhow - I always have the sense that the seasons being linked to the solar phases has broken down somehow in North-Am - it's going to be snowing until April and it barely snowed before January - but autumn only ended in December? I don't know. It just never seems to match proper.



It sure is dark though! Over the weekend young Agatha defeated Undertale - a game I cannot understand enjoying. I mean - I only very rarely begrudge someone their good time - but that game is the good time of lunatics as far as I can tell. She loved it and had many feelings & I understand what it was all about because she loudly narrated it to me while she played. Which was... fine. Fine-ish. In the end though I couldn't share her enthusiasm and I know how that suuuucks - when you have a media experience that you want to share "Read this book I read!" So I had her call one of her buddies & she ended up staying the night there - and we ended up walking through the snow on Sunday.

I had high hopes that starting out the day outside we'd be able to translate that into going a place & doing a thing - but it wasn't in the cards. In the end, with the blowing snow we had to concede to ourselves (well, I to myself, she's in a place in life where she is happy to do Nothing At All) that there was nothing for it but movies & chinese delivery all day. So that is how it went.



In the end, around the (now new to me) office we end up shopping for electric socks all day. The yard-workers & quarrymen (I work with quarrymen) have to be outside standing around machinery all day - so electric socks. Turns out there is such a thing and I feel like a dope for never even looking into it.

In the snow outside the coffeeshop where we duck to warm up I tell her, louder than I need to above the din of traffic "Enduring Cold Builds Character. Do you know what that means?"

"Come on dad, come on."

"It means we're better than other people. Don't forget."

Comments

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

Honestly this is the best endorsement of Undertale.

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

Well if your CRPG experience was miissing absurd puns and bullet hell mechanics it might be for you.

[fordmadoxfraud.livejournal.com]

Ha. I've been saving this on my Steam account for a rainy day.

[rasa.livejournal.com]

I forget other places are having mostly normal winters. It was almost 70 on Christmas here. We broke records. Then a few days later, winter, bam. It's been very very mild until again today, bam, winter. I think it's about the same temp here and we have that kind of wind that has knives in it. The two places I go most often have these parking lots that are like wind tunnels and I fucking hate it every time. My kid can't figure out what to do when the wind steals his breath so he just flails about like a fish. I hate winter. I also hate summer though, so.