The winter of my semi-discontent

I went to school in a little upstate NY town called Plattsburgh. 17 miles from the border. And yeah, it got a tad nippy in the winter. Lowest temp, at least when I was there, was -24. Which we hit twice. That's without wind chill.
And it never bothered me. Walking to classes in sub-zero weather? No sweat, so to speak.
While there I had two nicknames, the first of which I won't mention here. But the 2nd one was "Iceman". Even amongst my college friends, some of whom were Buffalonians, Rochesterites, Syracusealots, and Albanians, I had a reputation as someone who was impervious to permafrost. (By the way, I don't know what you call someone from Schenectady. If you're from there, I'd be curious)

Which is why I look in the mirror in 2013 and ask..."What the hell has happened to me?"

As I write this, I've already calculated that there are 31 days left to winter. That the sun sets a bit later  than last month but still too early. That the blizzard, which gave me a momentary flashback-little kid high, has long worn off. Much of the pack has melted but we're still looking at perhaps 8 inches of snow, with many drifts still over my head. And it looks depressing. It's not a pretty white. It's ecru. (It's not really ecru...I just like using that word) And ecru is an anagram for "cure", which I could really use right about now. 
I have a wonderful relationship. Which is why I cannot make any claim to being discontented. GWCTRA's house is lovely, except for one thing. It's got oil/forced air and it's dry enough inside to make the Atacama Desert feel like a rainforest. The result is that my skin now has enough paper cuts on it to make it look like the Badlands. Or maybe they're not paper cuts. Maybe the cut monster has been hacking me in my sleep. Maybe it's GWCTRA doing it. Maybe I'm going through some Stigmata thing. Maybe I'm losing my mind.
Last night, my band did a show nearby. I play keyboards and towards the end of the evening, the very act of making contact with the keys was painful. It also started snowing near the end of the show.
The word REDRUM keeps reverberating in my head. And for the first time in my life, I thought... well, Jimmy Buffett had the right idea:
In his song "Boat Drinks" are the lines: "This morning, I shot six holes in my freezer. I think I got cabin fever. Somebody sound the alarm."
At least I'm not at my brother's level. He's always hated the cold. He wimped out of the northeast and moved to LA, and got married. He and Carol have a son in college and live comfortably in the San Fernando Valley. A couple of months ago, and I'm not kidding, he emailed me and mentioned how tough the weather is out there. It apparently went way down to 50 with a steady rain. I suddenly felt a little better. Nothing like some smug superiority to get you through the day. I still hired a couple of wise guys to teach him a lesson. But when they arrived in LA, they did what everyone does who travels from the northeast to LA. They stuffed themselves on burritos and hung out at Malibu, looking like a couple of beached whales with the enforcer mentality of Gandhi.
My friend Andy, a native of Hermosa Beach and now living in CT for 30 years (his excellent blog "Navigating Life" is listed to the right of this screen) loves the cold. Everyone in my band seems to be fine with it. Everyone in my LIFE seems to be fine with it. My uncle, who turns 80 in April, lives in New Hampshire, and always hated the cold, seems to be stoical. Of course, he lives in New Hampshire, where it's illegal to display any emotions. But everyone I know has gone Stepford on me. GWCTRA is, literally, the only person I've ever met who enjoys the cold more than me. At least the "old me". She keeps the house at 45 degrees. I tried to climb in to the freezer just to keep warm.

I repeat...I don't know what has happened to me. I like to think of myself as someone who doesn't complain. In fact, I have very little tolerance for whiny, complaining behavior. Pretty ironic, then, that I'm turning into the very type of person who irritates me. I irritate me.
3/21 cannot get here too soon. And do NOT give us an April snowstorm, which is not out of the question in Connecticut.
I just might huddle up next to a Tea Party member for warmth. Doesn't get much more pathetic than that.