Ode to the Polar Vortex

Oh Polar Vortex, with your nippy temperatures and pretty snow deliveries. You’re finally bringing us a winter that’s really, well, winter. A perfect season for sledding and comfort food and nights by the fire. It has been so long since we’ve seen a January like this!

I want to thank you, Polar Vortex, for so many things.

• First, thank you for the critical budgeting skills you’ve taught me! Without you, I wouldn’t know to set aside an unimaginably insane amount of money for my heating bill next month. That’s one less trip to Target for me {OK, maybe three}.

• And thank you for the newfound appreciation you’ve given me for every single person who lives through the winters in the midwestern part of our country. Those are some hardy people. Or possibly insane. I’m not sure which. I would tip my hat to them but I’m not willing to risk momentary flesh exposure to the elements.

• Our time management skills have also come a long way, oh Polar Vortex. With the need to put 4-6 layers on my children every day before every departure from our home, including a seven month-old baby, I now have to start getting ready to leave the house before I’ve even returned from my last trip outside. Your endless visit has made my life a constant repeat loop of donning and removing winter gear. I think it would be more time efficient to live with one snow boot, a glove and scarf on at all times, while cursing near my front door.

• And now, oh joy of joys, I finally have the answer to just how many gloves my children can lose in one winter. I don’t have a final figure yet, but using simple extrapolation skills, I can tell you that it is a multiple of 1,700. If I could feel my damn fingers, I would take up knitting to keep up with the demand.

• All hail the resourcefulness of winter! Now that I absolutely hate leaving my home, I have managed to create meals out of the most improbable combinations of “ingredients.” Hell no, I’m not dragging three kids to the grocery store — but did you know that cream of mushroom soup + anyfuckingthing at all in a crock pot is actually quite good? Bonus points for making it sound like comfort food. Pinterest that, people.

• Polar Vortex, I’m forever grateful for how you’ve taken the guesswork out of what the weather will be like day to day. No more pesky climate surprises! Thanks to you, I can just bank on day in and day out of dangerous, bone-chilling frozen tundra. I can easily rely on the steadfast forecast of snow and ice with a chance of more damn drifting snow covered in black ice and some additional snow. You reliable motherfucker.

• Those sleds I bought for my kids three years ago that have barely been used until now? Since you came to visit, you frosty bitch, they are practically our primary vehicles this winter. Thank you for making them worth their purchase price. Now we look like some hybrid of the Amish and the fucking Ingalls family.

It seems my little ode went slightly off track. I’m sorry. I’m just cranky because my 110 year-old house is drafty and my aging, indoorsy dog keeps begging us for a catheter to last him until spring arrives.

I know that by comparison, many parts of the country have it worse. But here’s the thing: Living in New Jersey, I didn’t sign up for this bullshit. What I signed up for was a winter with a few fleeting cold spells and maybe a snow storm or two. I did not check the box that transported my family to Siberia.

And few things could make me wish and pay for a flight with three small kids. But you’ve broken me, Polar Vortex. I’m done. The baby bunting and the mitten bullshit and the frozen minivan door — it has all pushed me over the edge.

I’m fucking going to Disney World. Well, in about two months, anyway. When we get undoubtedly get some global warming, freakishly high  winter temperatures in the mid-70s or something.