Whether Or Not to Care About The Weather...

"Is this rain or snow?" a woman walking her dog outside my building asked as I rushed out this morning, late to drop off the kids at school, into the...Hmmm...What exactly was it? Could've been rain, could've been snow, could've been what the weathermen newly report as a "wintry mix." Did it matter?

I laughed. "Does it need a label?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No, but it's annoying."

We have had a fair share of snow this year, more than Montreal someone told me the other day. As I rushed along next to my new foul-weather friend, I noticed her fabulous furry boots.

"It shouldn't matter, you're definitely prepared with those boots..."

She looked down, kicked up her foot to take a good gander. "I bought them last year after the big snows..." she said.

It's a fact of life. Weather patterns change in a place from time to time, from year to year, from global warming or whatever else we don't quite understand but probably have some hand in. Family members in Arizona have been lamenting the lack of sunshine, the rainy 40 degrees. It's not supposed to be that way. My one sister has gone back there for the winter from the Seattle area, where that is to be expected. What can she do? It makes me think of a saying my Mom always said when we got disappointed by an unexpected outcome, weather or otherwise: "Man Proposes, God disposes..." There's a similar one, "You know how to make God laugh? Make a plan!"

Whether you are a believer or not, someone, something is certainly always having a joke at our expense when it comes to weather patterns. "Must be nice to have a job where you can be wrong more than half the time and still keep your job," someone said to me once about those who report on the weather. Poor bastards. Like doctors, they can only know what they can know, there are signs and symptoms but no sure thing until it happens.

But it's like this: we just have to deal. We have no choice, do we? It is a great opportunity to exert our flexibility muscles.

I dug a gold star out of my bag. "Here," I said, handing it to my precipitation figurer friend, "for trying to muddle through the weather, for putting up with it."

She took it with an excited gasp. "I get a gold star, yeah!" she said. She looked up at me with deep appreciation. "I'm going to have to put you down as one of the nicest people in the world..." she said.

I smiled. "Thank you," I said. Who cares about the weather when you can have awesome moments like this? It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter at all. I love bad weather, 'cause it so often brings people together, huddled close against the...rain, snow, whatever it is.