Baby It’s Cold Outside

Jasmine feels betrayed, and lets me know it. The morning started as always. She dashed down the hall ahead of me and sat on the sill waiting for me to open her little door to our balcony. It’s early morning and my first tasks are all cat-related: put food in one bowl, pour fresh water in the other, and open the door to the balcony.

Moments later, she is back inside, and staring at me as only a cat can - it's 35 outside. The odd ‘meorrow’ seems to ask accusingly, ‘what have you done to the weather’. She stares out the window and ventures out once or twice more before walking haughtily down the hall to lie on the leopard comforter at the foot of my bed. I keep a heating pad on low there beginning with the first day that dips under 40, just for her between the covers. I never run the central heat, so the bed is pretty cold when I first get in it around midnight. I put my feet under the spot with the heating pad just long enough to take the chill off and allow the down comforter to return my heat to me. Jasmine curls up on top of it for most of the night. She’ll visit it throughout the day as she determinedly goes out to see if things have changed. This afternoon, she'll be rewarded, as 70 is the predicted high, but soon winter will settle in in earnest and I'll be in for some seriously disdainful looks.

© Perle Champion

Winter Southern Style

The groundhog predicted 6 more weeks of winter, which would take us to March 15. As snow covers the ground and continues to fall here in Birmingham, Alabama this morning, it would appear that he was right. For this moment, it is winter.

This is the South; however, and winter is a now and then, here and there sort of thing. Today there is snow, but yesterday was just a mild breezy day and the day before that the temperature went from early morning 34 to 70 in the afternoon. I ate lunch at a picnic table by my office at the Colonnade and enjoyed the sun.

The weathermen are holding court as if this is a blizzard; it is not. There’ll be no TV to speak of this morning. They’ve preempted the Today Show and Good Morning America. I may get the Early Show, as the CBS folks are a little more sensible and give us a weather strip at the bottom of the screen. No matter, I’ve turned it off.

I walked amid the snowflakes before dawn this morning, and snapped a few pictures of this transient white wonder of nature, and went out again at daybreak. The snow is patchy at best with the grass showing through. The city streets are wet, not slippery. The freeway overpasses are another story, but I’ll not venture there until the veiled sun does its job of thawing them. Even now, it's playing peek-a-boo through the clouds.

So the groundhog was right. We’re having 6 more weeks of winter, but here in Birmingham, we’re having them Southern style – here and there; now and then.

Tuesday, it’ll be 62 and Wednesday 67 and sunny, so I’ll be back in shirtsleeves. This is my kind of winter. This is winter Southern Style.
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Perle Champion, University of Texas at San Antonio fine arts major, currently lives in Birmingham, Alabama’s colorful Southside, writing, painting, attending art openings, cooking, reading on the porch swing, and writing. Published in Birmingham News, Birmingham Weekly, Birmingham Arts Journal, Daily Mountain Eagle, First Draft Magazine, and Bantam’s Sneak Peek website.
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