February is, and always has been, my least favorite month. It is far enough into winter that I am tired of being cold, and it is far enough from spring that the miserable grey skies start to gnaw away at my happiness. I enjoy the Valentine's Day chocolates and celebrating my mom's birthday, but the rest of the month is a minefield of bad memories. I'm still reeling with hurt and regret about a myriad of horrible things that happened last February, and my only distractions this past month have been almost as horrible—friends disappearing, an unusual number of funerals at my church, etc.

That said, I am thrilled to have survived to see the beginning of spring (even if it is snowing right now) and the beginning of eleven beautiful, not-at-all-crummy months.

P.S. This coming Monday is National Reading Day (how cool is that?), and I am forever looking for new book recommendations. If we aren't already friends on Goodreads, let's remedy that!

I have been catching up on Back to Work this week, and one of the two podcast hosts, Merlin Mann, made a great comparison in episode 93:

"Chewing Topps gum is like eating stained glass."

Few things bring me back to my childhood as quickly as baseball, and I still have every Topps card my dad ever bought for me. The gum did indeed shatter in your mouth, but that was somehow part of the fun. Everything about baseball is fun (doubly fun now that Wrigley is serving Giordano's pizza), and everything about baseball reminds me of family and summer. February keeps trying to overwhelm me with grey skies and gloom, but the thought of that stupid gum is allowing me to smile today.

Spring is on its way to Chicago, as is evidenced by the pile of wet clothes on my bedroom floor. I took it upon myself to collect every form of precipitation today, save for hail, by traipsing through snow and ice and fog this morning and culminating in the grand finale—a monsoon-inspired bit of rain—during the two minutes it takes me to cross the parking lot after work. ("She proclaimed, 'Tadaaaa,' and curtseyed.")

Of course, the coming of spring is a relief and a joy, so I will gladly wrap myself in a trash bag if need be to stay dry until summer arrives. Friends and coworkers would actually probably pay me to change out of my winter uniform: jeggings, Uggs, bright pink lip balm. ("And not a single damn was given that year.") Sometimes, I'm surprised that my past and future selves haven't shown up to slap me for how thoroughly I have embraced spinsterhood as of late. But then I realize that Pastskirts and Presentskirts and Futureskirts would likely end up making tea and curling up in bed and having a Top Gear UK marathon and talking about Ents and cats. We would also pamper ourselves with facial masks and braid each other's hair and drink root beer floats and collapse into a fit of giggles somewhere around 3 a.m.

So I guess what I've learned today is that 1) I should buy some rain boots, 2) I should make friends with some ladies who aren't imaginary and who aren't me, and 3) root beer floats are still delicious.