Dear Winter,

I've had enough. I hate you. Go away.

When I was a kid, I used to have a certain fondness for you. I would build snow castles outside until my mittens were soaked and refrozen, and I would have to place them on the baseboard heaters to have them defrosted for the next day. I would trudge up a snowy hill in clothing so thick I couldn't bend my own limbs, only to catapult myself down on a thin metal object, knocking down my friends like chubby little bowling pins, and knocking out my front teeth too. And if you were especially kind, winter, you would cause the pipes at my school to burst, meriting us some days off. Or else you would make it too cold to get the yellow buses started up in the mornings. We could stay home to skate on our pond instead of going to school, eating Mom's chicken noodle soup instead of baloney sandwiches, and it was a pretty great trade-off in the end.

But since the age of 12, I've hated you. I look forward to the first snowfall like I look forward to a visit to my prone-to-spasms gynecologist.

I'm sick of dry, bleeding, chapped lips. My house is being overrun with chapsticks. Here's one on the keyboard. I have one in my nightstand, 2 in my purse, 3 in the bathroom, one in the car, one in the junk drawer, one per pocket per winter coat, one in the kitchen, and about a dozen others that seem to go from one location to the next, and almost always end up in Jason's pants pockets, about to get thrown in the washing machine (and worse yet, in the dryer, where chapstick melts, and makes 'artwork' out of all your favourite clothing). I must spend $400 per winter on this never-ending chapstick supply, and still, I smile, and the scab on my lip cracks open, and I'm tasting blood again.

Then there's the toque hair. Now, I don't often wear hats of any kind, especially in the winter. I risk frostbite to my cute little ears, and for good reason: when you take off the toque, your hair is tragically crushed. No matter how long it took you to style it in the morning, it's gone by the time you get to work. All the hair on the crown of your head is flat, irrevocably, but if that wasn't enough, the rest of your hair is subject to intense static electricity, so while the hair on top looks like a helmet, the rest looks like you've recently been spending time a little too close to the sockets. Attractive combination? No. Damn you, winter.

Damn you for the salt marks that eat away at all my favourite leather shoes. Damn you for $800 heating bills. Damn you for Jason's cold toes pressed against my back in the middle of the night. Damn you for the feeling of frozen nostrils. Damn you for tempting children everywhere to see if it's true what they say about sticking your tongue on a pole. It is true. And it's psychologically damaging for the rest of the kids to have to see his/her taste buds ripped off, and left behind on that pole for the whole rest of the winter.

Oh, and then there's the joy of car ownership during the winter. You have to set the alarm early to plug in the block-heater 4 hours before you expect to go anywhere (and if you lose your head and have a craving for a Big Mac in the middle of the night, be prepared for a long, snowy walk to buy jumper cables in the morning). Then, you have to let it run for half an hour to warm the motor, and saying a prayer to the auto god, wasting gas and running up the bill. Then you have to brush the snow, scrape the ice, pry the doors open, and convince your numb fingers to grip the icy steering wheel while wiping your windows clear from the cloudiness that accrues from the fog of your breath. And that's just to get things started. Next you have to navigate the snowy death roads. Now, sometimes we experience 'white out' where you may as well have skipped the clearing of your windshield because you can't see anything anyway. But even in the best conditions, if there's snow on the roads, you can't see the lines. You could be driving down the middle of a road, or not on the road at all, which is more common than you'd hope. You have to constantly fiddle with the buttons, going from heat to defrost, possibly cracking a window just to see even if it lets jack frost nip at your nose. The ass of your car never stops at the same time as the front: you slip and slide, and pray to not die. It's fun, really. And then there were these 2 fun occasions:

1. Trying to turn left at an intersection, I slid right into a snow bank instead. It took forever to back out of it, meanwhile I backed up traffic, people honked (thanks dudes, the honking really helped...there I was, just taking my time, spinning my tires for fun, and your honks made me realize that okay, I guess I should speed things up a bit).

2. Getting snowed in in a parking lot, and having to dig out my tired with bare hands. I had to do it in shifts, burying my fingers in the cracks of the seats just to warm them up a bit.

But still, driving isn't half as much fun as trying to fend off nasty colds and flus. I wash my hands obsessively. I avoid public places. When Jason is sick, I make him sleep on the couch. If someone's nose even looks slightly red, I yell DON'T INFECT ME! at the top of my lungs until said person backs away. And still, we all get sick. We all set aside our Chanel no.5 in favour of Vicks Vapo-Rub (mm, sexy). We carry cough drops and those special kleenexes with the lotion built right in, but it's never enough. It sucks to be cold and sick.

And yet, winter, I have saved my chief complaint for last: wet socks. Dang I hate wet socks. The minute you step outside, you enter the world of frogger. You hop over here, you hop over there, trying to avoid the wet spots, but you can't keep it up forever. Either you let your guard down, or you meet the puddle from hell, that is too large to make your way around and too wide to jump across. Your foot sinks into an icy, slushy, dirty hole of the coldest water ever. Your shoe fills with water, your toes feel like they may fall off, and your socks will not dry out all the day long. You'll have the cold clammy feeling until you can change your socks again, which is a pointless activity anyway. The hamper fills up with dirty wet socks, your sock drawer never has enough warm socks. And even if you manage to make it through the outdoors obstacle course without getting wet, you come in the house, track in snow, take your shoes off...and you have to put those dry socks somewhere. Down, on the wet floor. Like it or not, they're going to get wet. It's going to be gross. Allllllllll winter long.

So winter: take a hint. Take a hike! If you stick around for another 3 months, there's a very good chance that one of us is going to get it right in the ear (and it ain't gonna be me).

Sincerely (I mean it),

Jay