It’s currently my favorite, and least favorite, time of the year!

It’s that time of the year where I’m socially obligated to overstuff myself with turkey, green bean casserole, eggnog, and pumpkin pie, and then pass out cold on the living room couch, surrounded by cheering relatives as a couple of random football teams square off on live TV for a few hours. It’s also that time of year where I can almost never get warm no matter how many layers I wear, or how close I curl up against the heater, and I’m just one misstep and/or wind gust away from snapping my tailbone in two! Isn’t winter great?

This winter season is looking to be one of the roughest winters since 2006! It’s not even December yet, and we’ve already had a handful of bitterly cold blizzards starting in early October. Last year, I don’t remember seeing much snow until January. We had a barren Thanksgiving and dry Christmas last year. This year, Thanksgiving has fallen between two major winter weather events. Between Monday and Wednesday it was blizzarding. And it looks like between Friday and Saturday, it will be blizzarding again. 

Needless to say, I’m not looking forward to the rest of the season. I’m totally expecting to live in a frozen hellscape until the middle of May, and I’m not even slightly ok with that. I’d much prefer the milder winter weather of the last several years over what we’ve been dealing with this time around. Maybe when winter actually begins on December 21st, things will have calmed down. However, I’m not counting on that. 

Winter is especially rough on the western side of town. It's amazing what a difference of 25 miles can do! When I lived in northeast Denver and attended school downtown, we didn't have epic snow storms all that often. It did snow, but we only got a snow day once a year if we were lucky, and shoveling the driveway and sidewalks was a reasonable task. Also, the winds weren't absolutely horrendous. Sure, we had our windy days out there in Green Valley Ranch, but I never saw any jackknifed semi-trucks or stop signs folded in half in the five years I lived out there. 

During my first winter living in Littleton, I very quickly realized Littleton was a totally different climate than Green Valley Ranch. Not only did I have to shovel twice as much snow most days, but I also had to help Clarke extract a plastic trashcan that had been crushed and stuffed under his truck by a massive windstorm that hit the night before. We couldn't leave for school until that trashcan was successfully pulled out from under his truck, which took way more effort than it really should've. After that task was done, I had to explain to my 10th grade English teacher that a trashcan made me several minutes late for class. She couldn't stop laughing for about 5 minutes.

As much as I love living in the west after spending the first 14 years of my life living on the plains, I still have my days where I utterly despise it. I'll never not get upset by how much effort it takes to shovel the snow off my walkways. Instead of simply walking with the shovel in front of me, and launching the snow to the side every few feet, I have to pick up my shovel each time I push it through the snow. And, once all of the surface snow is removed, I have to scrape the hard-packed ice off the sidewalk and then sprinkle a bunch of salt everywhere. I also have to use a broom to whack the snow off the trees, because unlike in Green Valley Ranch, there are very big trees in Littleton that are prone to breaking. Big trees that don't belong to the pine tree family don't belong in the mountains, foothills, or plains right by the foothills. They are too brittle to handle the weight of the snow. 

I also wish I had a much easier way to clear the snow off my Xterra. I'm too tall to comfortably sit at my grandma Connie's desk, but too short to reach the snow that often ends up piling up on the center of my Xterra's roof, even if I have a broom. And, before y'all ask, "Why don't you just park in the garage?", half of my garage is currently dedicated to my dirtbike and boxes of books, and the other half is dedicated to my mom's cute little Rav4, which she complains about all the time but refuses to get rid of because it's cute. 

With that out of the way, since I have a mild fear of heights that prevents me from climbing up onto the roof with a broom, my solution to the snow on the roof problem is to just drive laps around my neighborhood until the remaining snow blows off. I would accelerate really quickly and then slam on the brakes, but I have a little storage compartment on the roof that will just catch all of the snow, preventing it from falling onto my windshield where my wipers can then deal with the problem (I tried that method once, and was really confused for an embarrassingly long time as to why the laws of physics weren't working).

Also, it turns out we really do get hurricanes in Colorado. The trashcan episode was just my first introduction to the fierce winter winds that regularly come rushing down the foothills and into the valley throughout the fall, winter, and spring (which, in Colorado, are basically the same season). I didn't know I could wake up to find that our old lawn furniture had been replaced by a completely different set, until I moved to Littleton. I also didn't know entire sections of fences and halves of trees could be blown down so easily, until I moved to Littleton. On top of that, I thought getting blown away was just a metaphor and not something that could actually happen, until I moved to Littleton. 

I refuse to drive home on Saturday in my Xterra with the high wind warnings now in effect. My Xterra won't fare very well in crosswinds sustained at 50 miles per hour, and gusting much, much higher. I don't have the experience, confidence, or the will to wrestle with that shit. Come to think of it, I don't think I could ever wrestle with 90 mile per hour wind gusts and expect to stay in my lane (or even on the road), no matter how experienced I become, and I'm absolutely not gonna try it. I already had my harrowing driving experience of the week this Black Friday when severe fog rolled in. I couldn't even see the cars ahead of me most of the drive back to my grandparents'. Half of the cars I did see were hanging out in my lane, because they were all speed demons who were passing over the double-yellow line to get a TV for 75% off before it was too late!

I do not need to be screaming an endless obscenities all the way back to safety tomorrow like I did today. I do not need to play a game of "can I make it home without doing some impromptu off-roading" tomorrow. I do not need to play a game of "dodge semi" or "ground-blizzard chicken" either (I already unwillingly played "Black Friday dense fog chicken" with about 10 cars in the span of four miles today). Also, I could avoid having to crawl under my Xterra on the cold, cold ground to rip a massive tumbleweed or some other debris out of my undercarriage, just by staying at my grandparents' for an extra day!

So, I'll wait for Sunday to go home, when the wind supposedly calms down and the Broncos' game has most of Denver at home gawking at their TVs (even though the Broncos have been awful this year). However, I can't trust the weatherman. In Colorado, it's a deadly sin to trust the weatherman. Especially when hell, er I mean, Colorado decides to freeze over about three months early.  

I'm glad my dad gave me all of his old off-roading equipment to me not too long ago. It was originally intended to be a Christmas present, but my dad must've felt compelled to give me the present early. Does he know something I don't? Let's not think about that scary question.

I have enough tow straps to hitch several vehicles together like a team of draft horses if I wanted to. I also have built-in D-rings and a D-ring hitch installed on my Xterra. If I do get caught in one of Colorado's famous surprise blizzards and/or windstorms, I can rest assured that I won't be in the ditch for long. At least, assuming someone in another large vehicle would be willing to pull over and help me out before AAA arrives. 

For the record, I personally am not willing to pull over to help pull out an idiot in a Miata. If you decide it's a good idea to drive the highway speed limit in a rear-wheel-drive sports car while it is below freezing and snowing, you totally deserve to spend two hours in the ditch waiting for AAA to rescue your dumb ass. And, I'll be sure to honk at you just so you can watch me hysterically laughing at you as I slowly go by. However, if you were doing everything you could to safely stay on the road, but still ended up in the ditch, I'll be more than willing to come pull you out, assuming the wind isn't strong enough to blow me over (which it all too often is on the front range during the winter) and I can see 10 feet in front of me. 

But, if the weather is forecasted to be rough, or even on the border of being rough, I'm staying home. Living in Littleton has taught me to always add a minimum of 15 miles per hour to the forecasted wind speed, subtract at least 10 degrees from the forecasted temperature, and add about 3 inches of snow to the forecasted snow totals. Littleton weather is also why I always keep an extra coat, gloves, and hat in my truck, along with various tools and things that aren't really tools but can easily be used as tools (for instance, an old, rusty butterknife can also double as a flathead screwdriver or a miniature crowbar), and of course, my dad's old collection of off-roading gear he had for his Xterra. Still, those are emergency-only tools for if Colorado decides to start blizzarding eight hours early and I'm on the road (which almost happened this last Monday. I'm really, really glad I decided to listen to my gut and stay an extra ten minutes, just to see if something would happen).

Surprisingly, there are a handful of things I do like about winter.

For one, I no longer live in fear of pissing off the wrong wasp while I’m outside. I’ve had a pretty bad fear of wasps ever since I had a bad experience with them when I was little. Even though I wasn’t the one who got stung when my older brother, Ryder, thought it was a good idea to kick a small wasp nest that had been built underneath the grill, that was still a traumatizing experience for me. Even as an adult, I will instantly bolt if I see a living wasp anywhere near me, regardless of the situation. I don’t like much of anything that has more than four legs, but wasps are the only insects in Colorado that truly strike fear into my soul. Words cannot describe how glad I am that those fuckers will be stuck in their godforsaken hives or dead for the next six or seven months. 

Also, I do love the holidays! I spent this Thanksgiving with some distant relatives I haven’t seen in over a decade. I overstuffed myself with classic delicious Thanksgiving food, and ended up in a massive food coma no amount of caffeine in the world could get me through. I passed out on the couch for two hours while everyone else shouted at the TV. I think their favorite football team won, though I’m not sure since I didn’t wake up until after the game was over. 

Christmas is my favorite holiday by far, though! Not only is it basically round two of Thanksgiving dinner, but it’s also the one time my mom’s church actually has a sermon I don’t struggle to pay attention to (probably because they use that sermon to rope others into the church, so it has to be a little more intellectually engaging than usual). Plus, most of my family members don’t take the holiday too seriously.

My grandpa Lyle and grandma Connie kind of do, but they also attend ultra-conservative Lutheran churches and take Christianity very seriously, so I’m not surprised. They still host a delicious Christmas Day dinner, give and receive presents, and they don't expect me to dress formally, so they don’t go as far as some conservatives go. However, I've run into a handful of Lutherans who think I'm going to hell because I refuse to wear a dress (or anything formal) on Christmas or at church. The furthest I'm willing to go is take my hat off, but even that's not something I do unless my grandparents ask me to. I've been wearing hats everyday for several years now, so I just don't feel right if I'm not wearing a hat, and always find myself staring down at it longingly, just waiting for the sermon to end so I can put it back on, every time I attend a church that would probably kick me out if I didn't take it off. 

But my grandma Debbie and grandpa Shawn, who always host Christmas Eve dinner and presents, really don’t take Christmas all that seriously. I typically join them a few days before Christmas Eve to bake and decorate Christmas cookies. Only about half of the homemade sugar cookie dough actually gets turned into fully cooked sugar cookies, which is perfectly fine. Nobody’s gotten Salmonella from eating the raw egg dough, and even if we did, I doubt we’d stop eating that shit. It's fricken delicious!

When Christmas Eve finally arrives, I again come to my grandparents’ house in the early morning to help cook Christmas dinner and watch classic Christmas movies. My favorites are Christmas Vacation and Elf. If you’ve ever seen those movies, and understand my sense of humor, you can probably tell why I love them so much. 

By the afternoon, when the table is set, dinner is cooked, and all of my other close relatives arrive, we have a relatively civilized Christmas Eve dinner. While we don't get into fist-fights over politics or chuck huge helpings of cranberries across the table at each other, we still tend to throw each other under the bus a lot, and there are no shortage of very embarrassing and highly TMI stories that get thrown around in the conversation. There's no feeling quite like the one I get when I'm getting roasted by literally everyone for the stupid shit I did as a kid. 

But, the real fun doesn't begin until it's time for dessert and the whipped cream spray cans are taken from their hiding spots in the basement fridge. All hell breaks loose the second someone is armed with a spray can full of whipped cream. Personally, I’m not a fan of eating whipped cream, but I am a huge fan of getting into a whipped cream food fight with the rest of my family!

After every can is emptied, the tables are cleared, dishes are washed, and whipped cream is wiped off the walls or licked up off the floor...by the dogs of course (I know I had y'all for a second there), we finally sit down to exchange gifts. While most of the gifts are genuine, a handful of them are pranks. Most of the prank gifts are underwear, toilet paper, a literal lump of coal, or just an empty box. But, a few of the prank gifts are deliberately meant to scare the recipient.

Several years ago, my grandma wrapped up a realistic rat she got from the Halloween store and gave it to my mom. When Mom ripped off the wrapping paper and popped open the lid of the box, a furry, red-eyed rat jumped out at her, which caused her to scream bloody murder and instinctively throw the box containing the fake rat across the house, nearly taking out the leftover wine and sparkling juice on the kitchen table. That incident has become a family legend, and we were warned that sometime, when we’re least expecting it, one of us will end up with another scare prank as a gift. 

For some reason, I have a strong feeling I’ll be the next recipient of the scare prank gift in the very near future. The toilet paper and underwear are getting old. 

Speaking of stuff like that, I do enjoy the snow when it isn’t getting blown directly into my eyeballs or making driving treacherous, mostly because I do have a very mischievous side. My little brother knows to keep his distance when I’m shoveling or when the snow is just perfect for making snowballs. However, he is also very mischievous, so he’ll launch snowballs at me even though he knows I’m still much bigger and stronger than him, and have no problem picking him up and tossing him face-first into a snowdrift. I know it won’t be long before my little brother gets taller (and likely stronger) than me, so I have to have fun while I can. Soon, the tables will turn, and we both know it. Jack cannot wait. 

I’m also an avid sledder. I can’t ski or skate for shit, but I do love to go sledding, especially since I live so close to a giant hill called Sledding Hill Park. When I first moved to Littleton, I had a pretty bad experience one of the first times I went down that hill. I hit a prairie dog mound at just the right speed and angle to send me skidding down the rest of the hill on my face. Ever since then, I’ve refused to ride down that hill without wearing my motocross helmet. I do not care what people think. I do not want to end up skidding down that hill on my unprotected face ever again. It's totally worth the mocking stares I get whenever I wear my motocross helmet to the sledding hill. Maybe if I bring a can of WD-40 to attempt to recreate that sledding scene from Christmas Vacation, people won't ask me what I need the helmet for. 

People often act like I’d just broken all of my fingers without flinching whenever I tell them I can’t ski. I was born and raised in Colorado. How can I not know how to ski?! Trust me, I’ve tried. My ski trips have all ended badly in one way or another. The first time my dad took me skiing, I didn’t know how to stop and ended up running into an orange barrier thingy. The last time I went skiing was with Clarke during spring break in 2017, and I was so scared of losing control that I went down the entire mountain in the pizza position with my poles scraping the icy snow below. By the time I reached the bottom of the mountain, my legs were numb from being so tense for so long, and I couldn’t walk. I guess skiing just isn't for me, even though I was born and raised in Colorado my whole life. 

Anyway...

I really enjoy Christmas music and putting up Christmas decorations. Mom and I have a Christmas tree for nearly every room in the house, and enough strings of Christmas lights to line the perimeter of every room in our house, twice. If it wasn't illegal, I'd definitely outline my truck with Christmas lights, strap a Christmas deer on the hood, and keep a real Christmas tree strapped to the roof. If I didn't have a mild fear of heights, I'd definitely put strings of Christmas lights all over my roof, around every tree, outlining the trimming, and hang up a Christmas deer from the backyard oak tree with a red strand of lights on the ground below it, in full view of the street and park behind my house. But, because I'm a wuss who has watched Clark Griswold staple his sleeve to his gutter too many times, and can see myself doing that exact same thing, I've decided going crazy with the decorations indoors is good enough for me. 

Also, during the whole month of December, I listen to almost nothing but Christmas music. Personally, I think it's just obligatory to listen to hours of Christmas music everyday during the month of December. One's gotta get into and stay in that Holiday spirit, ya know? So, if you think I'm gonna be rocking out to Reverend Horton Heat's Christmas album while I'm driving through the snow, you're damn right!

And, Christmas is the one time of the year where my mom's church sings actual hymns instead of the garbage that is contemporary Christian music. Hymns like O Holy Night and Hark the Herald Angels Sing are genuinely inspired by the gospel of Jesus Christ. But, the shit most churches sing before every sermon today is just as repetitive and vapid as most of the sermons themselves. I really appreciate going to church on Christmas since I don't have to put up with Christian music that is very clearly just parodying modern secular music. Plus, you have no soul if those hymns don't give you serious chills. 

However, the one Christmas song I almost can't stand is It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. Sure, I know that song's talking more about the holidays than winter itself. But that doesn't take away from the fact that the day after New Year's Day, the holiday cheer gets sucked out of the air by the return of the work week, and the realization that Winter only officially started two weeks before. Nothing is more depressing than the realization that we'll have to put up with air so cold it hurts to breathe it, howling winds, heavy snow, and dangerous ice for another five months without Christmas celebrations before June finally arrives, bringing with it temperatures that eventually have me begging for winter's return. I swear, there is no in-between. 

The rest of winter beyond the holidays just sucks major ass. I think about 1/3rd of Americans get a good case of SAD every winter, including myself, because the weather is awful most of the time, and everyone is stuck going to work and school during the winter. I also tend to get sick for basically the entire winter, regardless if I actually have an infection, simply because of how rough the weather is on me. 

With the increase of anti-vaxxers sending their living smallpox blankets to school, who then come into contact with my little brother, who then touches everything in the house with his grubby little fingers without spending more than five seconds washing his hands first, I expect to get more infections than usual until the government finally closes all of the loopholes that allow those drooling idiots to send their uncontrolled petri dishes to school. 

There’s only so much I can do to prevent myself from getting sick. I did get my flu vaccine this year, a little later than what I was comfortable with, but that wasn’t my fault. Turns out every hospital except for one little office didn’t get them until the middle of November, and because of my health insurance, I can’t just walk into any store and get it. Trust me, I’ve tried, but those damn pharmacists practically run a background check on me just to make sure I’m not insured before giving me a free shot, which is really stupid. 

I should be allowed to get my damn flu shot from anywhere at anytime and be prioritized, especially since even the tamest flu has a 50/50 chance of killing me. But noooooo, that’s not how our retarded, er I mean, our profoundly stupid health care shit works in ‘Merica! 

I have hand sanitizer in nearly every room of the house, in my truck, and on my backpack, and rub it all over my hands and arms at least ten times a day. I also disinfect the house everyday during the winter, which hopefully kills off all of the dangerous germs before my brother comes home from school and ruins all of my hard work. But, I always end up sick, and pretty much stay that way until the last snow of the season. At the moment, I’m dealing with sinus issues that have been a problem for over a month now. My illness hasn’t gotten any worse or better, and my breathing has not been affected. So, I’m pretty damn sure I’m just allergic to winter. 

I might actually enjoy winter a lot more if I wasn’t so sick and cold for the entire season. Yet, here I am, chugging down tea I honestly ate the taste of, but was told by my actual doctor would help me with my post-nasal drip issues (and she was right), wearing three heavy hoodies, two pairs of wool socks, long underwear, and thick jeans, shivering under a down feather comforter with the heat on full-blast and my warm little dog curled up by my side. 

I really don’t want to leave the warmth of my bed to take my dog outside, but I know he’ll be whining at me to take him out in less than an hour, which means I’ll have to stand outside in the bitter cold while the little turd takes his sweet time finding the perfect place to do his business. Then, I’ll come inside shivering so hard I’ll have a difficult time taking off my boots and setting them up by the front door, so I don’t trip and die on them when Friday’s blizzard knocks out the power for a few hours. Then, I’ll throw myself back into bed and shiver for another hour until I finally warm up again, just enough to stop violently shaking, but not enough to actually feel warm. I’ve only felt warm for a couple hours over Thanksgiving. I was asleep for those two hours, curled up between two other people, shoulder-to-shoulder with them. 

Also, even though I probably ate close to 10% of my total body weight in food on Thanksgiving and just finished an entire 2 pound salmon filet hardly two hours ago, I’m hungry again. I don’t want to stand up in the kitchen to cook because I’ll get very cold, but I have to. And before anyone asks me why I don’t just turn the heat on. I did. It’s blowing continuously at 80 degrees. Problem is, my grandparents’ house is very open with vaulted ceilings, and has lots of drafty windows that don’t stop sucking hot air out even when they’re tightly closed and the blinds are drawn.

Also, heat rises. Cold air sinks. I’m pretty sure it’s nice and toasty up by the ceiling (in fact, based on the temperature in the upstairs hallway, it is), but it’s basically the North Pole on the ground. The tile and hardwood floors don’t help with that at all. 

With that, it looks like my dog is ready to make me spend ten minutes outside with him, and I’m so damn hungry right now since I’m thinking about food again. 

But before I go, I forgot to bitch about glasses. As someone who’s only been wearing glasses to drive and read far away menus since early September, nobody ever told me that foggy glasses in the cold is a very real and very annoying thing. Thankfully, I don’t really need them to see well in daily life (I just can’t read menus or road signs, or pick out tiny details from a distance without them), but I feel really bad for those who do. How the hell do you deal with going blind every time you exhale in the cold?! 

Also, I’m broke as shit this holiday season. I hope everyone is satisfied with my cooking and artwork, cuz that’s what everyone is getting this year!