Landlocked & Loaded: the first thaw

***Updated: I just re-read this and Ii'm moderately embarrassed by the number of spelling and grammar errors in this post... it's worse than normal. I'm sorry. And also, we got dumped with four inches of snow and ice last night, so despite my assertion that I'll be running in shorts outside.... I won't be. I'm practically illiterate and also a liar. Fuck.

Gotta confession.

And it's not exactly one brimming with pride, so hang in there.

In the winter I'm a sloth.

I don't exersize, I rarely return phone calls, I go to bed earlier than the Golden Girls; that is, if the Golden Girls go to bed any later than nine pm. I'm generally a waste of space and kind of a buzz-kill to be around... unless I'm given a bottle of either champagne or Jim Beam, and then I'm just kind of an annoying drunk. It's really disappointing to me that I'm as downright lame as I am for a quarter of the year. I sometimes make feeble attempts at cheer, such as planning mini-trips, purchasing a multitude of items I can't afford and/or don't need, and attempt to convince myself that I'm not as cold as I think I am... but for the most part, I suck. I just..... can't.

BUT WAIT, that's not even the confessional part.

Every year, without fail, at the first thaw I get annoying. Like, real fucking annoying.

About FITNESS.

As soon as the temperature guage tips over forty degress, even for one ever-loving day, I'm all gun-ho about making life changes, eating right, putting my best foot forward, and never spending another unecessary moment indoors ever again.

I'm not even unhappy with my body... It's like I just HAVE to be moving all the time... I've got all this frigging pent-up energy that apparently sex and yelling at terrible winter drivers didn't expell. AND I MUST EXERSIZE. And encourage ALL of my friends to join me, because I get incredibly bored running by myself.

It's almost the end of February, that first thaw has come and gone, my friends. I'm practically engineering the fitness train, and I can palpably feel my pitiful mental state shedding the thick outter crust of winter bitterness.

It's like I'M A CAGED BEAST and I'm ripping the chains off my body.

Now I've been tempted with more livable temperatures.... and I'm going to be right pissed if I wake up in the morning and there's snow on the ground. Mr. Local Weatherman says we're getting snow tonight, and I bite my thumb at him. I'm not buying it.

But I know what's going to happen anyway, because every year we get AT LEAST one more snow storm/bout of frost-bite inducing cold that threatens to send me over the edge... almost forces me to desert the midwest for sunnier climates... FOREVER. It's like trudging around the mall all fucking day, and feeling completely exhausted and finding NOTHING to wear to this huge party you've been looking forward to FOR MONTHS where you're trying to impress someone, but everything looks cheap on you and your skin looks all sallow in the flourescent lights and you decide to give up and go home, and then you agree to try on one more thing apiece with your friends and you come out of the dressing room wearing the most PERFECT fucking pair of jeans, and you know they look fucking bomb on you and you start dancing around in the changing room all excitedly and your friends look sort of chagrined that YOU were the one to find something perfect... and then you notice the price tag says "Don't even fucking think about charging that to your Dad's credit card because he will skin you alive and you know full well that you will NOT make rent this month if you buy these with your own money."

And then you leave the mall all downtrodden and pissed off because you're SURE no pair of jeans will ever look that good on you again. And you actually feel physically ill thinking about how you just left them there, in the store, when they were CLEARLY meant for your ass. And you borrow a shirt from one of your friends and end up wearing some old skirt you had in the back of your closet, and you still look really good at the party but you totally don't go home with that hot guy, probably because you didn't have the perfect outfit.

But then like six weeks later your mom offers to buy you a new pair of jeans, so you hurry back to the exact store where you found THE pair and yep! they still look fucking hot on you, but you didn't get to wear them to the party....... but it's still awesome... and you'll have a good run together for several months until something happens to damage them irrepairably.... I'm getting a little carried away here... but this is how Spring is for me.

It's like it's playing Just The Tip with me.

And I'm over it.

This first thaw has tempted and teased me, shown me fifty degrees and threatened to take it all away with a blanket of snowfall, the way that it does year in and year out and this year I'm rebelling.

I WILL run in shorts OUTSIDE, by god, and nothing is going to stop me.

At least until next November.

The ultimate battle.