Hibernation The Bold North Way

A beautiful snow was falling. Nothing unusual about snow in late January.

But this time I was struck by several things. When I went to the Y early that morning it was 28 degrees and raining. Hard. When it rains in January, you pay attention. Rain turns to ice in a hurry and freezes to your windshield. And, yes, it did.

It was 0 degrees one day earlier so this early morning rain was striking a very cold road surface turning it to ice immediately. As I drove cautiously I noticed that the streets weren’t very slippery. The rain was freezing into tiny jagged ice crystals that actually improved traction. There were slippery spots for sure but overall traction was good. Well, in these parts, experience teaches us not to get too confident with any road conditions.

Later, the temp climbed to nearly 35 degrees and it was snowing. So it rained below freezing and snowed above freezing. Go figure. This Missouri weather might become the norm here if the climate is indeed warming.

Another observation was that this weather event, while predicted, was not highlighted much on the Twin City TV stations. That’s because it wasn’t affecting them. In fact, radar showed the western edge of the storm around Hampton. Weather events that do not affect the majority of their viewers are mentioned only in passing. I should have sent them a video of the rain coming down.

I suppose I should be more forgiving. This might have been a storm that grew faster than anticipated. And we’ve had weather like this before. You just never know what to expect so I’ve learned to expect anything.

As kids we would be heartbroken by rain in January. And we did not want to hear about a “January thaw.” What were we supposed to do when there wasn’t snow to play in? It was hard not to think about that new sled just sitting in the garage.

This was cabin fever. So we invented our own entertainment. We had to. We had no internet, cell phones, video games, or DVD players. Our TV received only a few very snowy black and white channels and the shows were mostly for adults. Boring.

We played games and built furniture forts. Old Maid, Yahtzee and Authors were favorite games. If we were really stuck indoors for a long time, we played Monopoly. We worked in shifts on 500-piece picture puzzles only to find out at the end that one or two pieces were missing. We were very careful not to ask Mom “what’s there to do?” or she would find something for us to do and it usually involved work.

This was kid hibernation. Not like bears. We weren’t sleeping all winter. But we were stuck in a house-cave and it seemed unfair and endless.

Today, I’m hibernating. But this is not kid hibernation. At my age it’s different. Im throughly enjoying it. I’m doing a lot of reading. I do get outside to fill the bird feeders and to shovel those pesky one-inch snowfalls. Of course, what I should really be focused on are those indoor projects I don’t want to do in the summer like cleaning out closets and organizing files. And tax season is just around the corner. One thing is certain – bears lose weight during hibernation. Humans, not so much.

One thing I finished was scanning in the last several hundred slides that no one will ever look at. It’ll be much more work digitizing photos in a couple dozen albums so that remains on my list of projects.

But along with projects that should be done, it’s good to have a fun project. My current project is figuring out how to use my new Apple AirPod Pros. These are the earphones that were Christmas gifts Catherine and I gave each other that were backordered and have now arrived.

They are indeed a project. Just figuring out which ear they go in is not obvious. There’s a tiny L and R on them, but not easy to see with my eyes which are begging for cataract surgery. Is it just me or is text getting smaller and smaller? I almost need a magnifying glass to read the phone book and comics section now. Good luck if you need to read a serial number or model number.

The AirPods have the ability to tell you if you have them inserted in your ears correctly. Really. And they can play a sound to help you find them, which is a good thing since they are small and not connected to each other with a wire. They are also white which I realized could be a concern when wearing them while walking to the mailbox through snow.

But the best feature is noise cancellation. It’s pretty amazing. It can completely eliminate the sound of a furnace fan and greatly diminish the sound of a TV or Catherine talking to me. Now that’s useful when hibernating.

And if it’s noon and you’re reading this in your nightgown or PJs, you might be hibernating. It’s what we do in the Bold North this time of year.