Don't get me wrong. I love winter. I love running through snowfall and the squeak your running shoes makes on the snow. I love sledding. I can handle ice-fishing. I love sweaters and Christmas getting cozy with the people you love over mulled wine and hot soup.
I love all of those things. It's part of the reason I haven't given the Upper Midwest the finger and packed my bags for somewhere a little more moderate.
But these days I spend a lot of time looking at flights to warm weather destinations. I can't stop thinking about last summer at the cabin(s). Of long lazy afternoons floating in an inner tube off the pier. Of the way raspberries taste when they off the bush and warm from the sun. Of long walks in the woods when the trillium blossoms. If I don't get into a canoe and on a lake in the next two weeks I think I might lose my mind.
Like I said, a little case of winter madness.
***
I've been thinking about trying online dating again.
I love being single. I love coming home to a quiet house and being able to do exactly what I want with my weekends. Not having to share my bed is the best thing in the world. I don't have to worry about keeping someone else awake when I'm up with a book.
But I spend a lot of time planning ideal dates. Long drives out to the middle of nowhere to see a meteor shower. Morel hunting if spring ever comes. Sneaking out of bed early on a Saturday morning to surprise someone with coffee and scones.
Like I said, thinking about trying online dating again.
***
Over the weekend, I surprised the gang by being able to sing along with a country song.
It was sort of unusual that commercial radio was even on. Normally we're a MPR/Pandora crowd, but for whatever reason it was. It was on a country station because, well, who knows? All five of us had grown up in the rural midwest, and while we're all a touch uppity about our music, we must have a certain fondness for commercial country music.
I'd been reasonably quiet for most of the morning. My running partner and I had gone out together for the first time in seven weeks and came home to homemade caramel rolls and coffee. We were collaboratively doing the crossword puzzle and cursing Will Shortz. It was a fine morning.
Anyway, this song comes on the radio and I immediately blurt out "I love this song!" One of my friends turns and just looks at me. I know what she's going to say before she says it.
"You're the last person I would have thought would like country music."
She's right, of course. I do probably give off that impression (have you ever been in a room when I'm talking about my love for Miles Davis?) But I can also sing along with every Dixie Chicks song ever written. Radio stations like this were a huge part of where I grew up. I have a certain fondness for them as a result.
But it's more than that (isn't it always?). It's that I genuinely like the idea of throwing a backapack into the back of someone's car (Let's get real, I live in the city. No one owns a truck.) and going somewhere without cell phone reception for a weekend. I want someone to take me on a (non ice-fishing) fishing date.
I love the city. I will never live anywhere with fewer than 600,000 people again. But there's a small part of me that still loves the idea of being in the middle of nowhere. Waking up to birdsong and wind in the trees instead of the goddamn Bix truck making a delivery to the restaurant across the street.
***
The men in my life are hot right now.
I don't mean they're more good-looking than normal. I certainly don't mean that they're overheating (ha!). I mean that they are extremely pissed.
At me.
This is not an unusual turn of events for me. I am hyper-competitive and a total trash talker. I am extremely talented at stupid things, like cornhole, and can be unbearable when I win.
Of course, my backyard looks like Winterfell right now, so we're not talking about me being good at cornhole.
I received a barrage of angry messages after my last post about literary everymen and the complicated relationship I have with my father. And I'm talking angry.
You intentionally misrepresented an entire male generation for laughs.
Could you paint with a broader brush, Kel?
This is the worst post you've ever written.
You're the most emotional person I know. You're uniquely badly-equipped to talk about men's emotions.
Teddy Roosevelt is dead, Kel. Get the fuck over it.
Yikes.
This is not an unusual turn of events for me. I am hyper-competitive and a total trash talker. I am extremely talented at stupid things, like cornhole, and can be unbearable when I win.
Of course, my backyard looks like Winterfell right now, so we're not talking about me being good at cornhole.
I received a barrage of angry messages after my last post about literary everymen and the complicated relationship I have with my father. And I'm talking angry.
You intentionally misrepresented an entire male generation for laughs.
Could you paint with a broader brush, Kel?
This is the worst post you've ever written.
You're the most emotional person I know. You're uniquely badly-equipped to talk about men's emotions.
Teddy Roosevelt is dead, Kel. Get the fuck over it.
Yikes.
At the end of two days of furious invective (to which I am, apparently, overreacting because I'm emotional) I consider taking the post down and making a blanket apology to everyone carrying XY chromosomes.
***
If I could be anywhere in time and space right now, it would be an indeterminate July weekend, at the cabin.
I want to wake up slowly with endless cups of coffee on the porch, watching the birds on the lake. I want to go for a long bike ride through the woods and work up a good sweat that I rinse off by jumping off the pier and spending hours in the lake. I want to drift off in the hammock reading a book and spend the evening lying on the end of the pier watching the stars come out. At the end of the weekend I want to come back to the city and walk along the Mississippi, catch a late movie, argue about books, eat Ethiopian food, revel in the fact that I can do all of these things, that I can be both of these people.
I want someone to do them with me.
Listen, I know Theodore Roosevelt is dead. I also know that he was a once-in-a-generation man (let's gloss right over the fact that we've had a couple generations since he died without another man like him and maybe we're due). But the point that I was trying to articulate last week, the point that seems to have the guys in my life furious with me is that I don't think that it's asking too much to want a nerd who loves the outdoors, an outdoors man who realizes that, occasionally, it's all right to spend a sunny day reading in the hammock instead of tromping through the woods.
And whether it's a case of winter madness or just plain lonliness or who the fuck knows, it seems really important to find someone right now, when the weather is frigid and awful so that by the time the snow finally melts I'll be ready to ask him to take me fishin' in the dark.
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