Now, let’s see. It’s a lot warmer than usual most of the time, and the creek seems to be perpetually high. Occasionally the salt trucks are out. Most of the time we really don’t need the heavy duty winter coat. Oh, yes, it’s winter in Ohio.
A lot of people around here are quite convinced they could live happily with winter weather like this every year. Do not count me among them.
First of all, I like Ohio’s weird weather. If you have lived here very long, or if you have just driven through once, you must be aware of the unending, uncomplimentary weather comments. There are enough of them to keep a conversation with a total stranger going for a long time.
I’ll admit I did begin to get tired of the long parade of rainy days, but I’m sure that a blizzard is just around the corner. Then we can go off on a whole new topic, for this year, about how the snow plows delight in plowing us in.
Best of all, if we can get a good freeze going we have a fair chance of eliminating all the flu bugs that have been plaguing us.
Last fall when they announced the flu vaccine was available, I decided I really should get a shot. Then they began to explain which vaccine would cover which flu. By the time I was ready, they had run out of vaccine.
Was I worried? Of course not. I hadn’t had a bad case of flu since I retired from my day job, which was teaching school.
It was sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas that I developed a serious dry cough. You may have experienced the kind. Once you start, you can’t stop until you gag, and most folks stare at you as if you are independently responsible for starting a plague.
Several weeks into the cough, your sinuses either fill up or dry up, and sleep doesn’t come very easily. You seek medical help and find out that you have a case of “whatever is going around.” Then you are issued scripts, which might help relieve the symptoms.
In previous years, within a week or so of resting when you could and isolating yourself from others, you discovered that almost everybody was sharing your symptoms, and you were ready to re-enter the world of the living.
But this year someone rewrote the book. Instead of a week or so of suffering, the time has been expanded. One gentleman I know has had this “flu” since Halloween, and he has accepted it as a permanent way of life.
Now this is where Ohio’s great weird weather would be most welcome. A really good blizzard with an accompanying solid freeze could “freeze out” the flu. After our last year’s super freeze we should all be supplied with whatever we need in a power failure right down to the battery powered, five-inch, black and white television. By now they probably have a magnifying screen to cover the monitor so you can see what’s on it.
One good thing about the current situation is that I’ve spent so much time resting that I have already solved the “Winter blahs” without spending a good part of our income.
If you’re going to spend a lot of time flat on your back on the sofa, you really need comfortable sofa pillows. Before all the Christmas decorations were down, two new sofa pillows were in place. They are silk-like, pastel color-block which fit that sofa like they were custom made for it. I couldn’t have chosen anything better if I had done it in good health.
AUTHOR’S NOTE 1: This column was first published in the Greenville Advocate January 25, 2006.
My sincere thanks to my readers and friends who expressed their sympathy to me on the death of my grandson John. It does help to know so many people cared.
