in which i talk much more than usual

i'm driving carefully down an icy, quiet street listening to cbc radio and an iron and wine song comes on and the snow is falling a little bit right in time with the soft guitar and suddenly i'm inside a snowglobe that some great invisible hand has just turned upside down.

i was just at the starbucks and now i'm all full of a peppermint mocha and a sweet conversation, and i'm bundled snugly up in my scarf and the mittens barclay gave me for Christmas last year so next to none of my skin is showing and i feel like i could go and roll and roll and roll in the snow and not get cold. 

i am invincible.

i look out my driver's side window just in time to see a perfect snowflake land right at eye-level on the glass, and i marvel at how far it's fallen while staying so precisely intact, and that's maybe when it happens, without me fully noticing at first. 

i'm rounding the corner onto my street and the sun is getting ready for night, throwing its rays onto the pillowy clouds and blankets of snow and i keep having to pull over so i can enjoy it without killing somebody. 

people are staring at me standing beside my car with my cell phone taking pictures, so i start pretending i've broke down and am calling for help. 

no one stops to help me. 

typical.

i start to get ticked at society, and all the self-centered, uncaring -- but quickly remind myself that if someone does stop, i'm going to feel like an idiot.

then, who cares. 

then, i get stuck in a snow bank.

then, i'm free.

i get that feeling like i usually do in june when the puddles are drying and the weather is warming up--the very same feeling.

and just like that i realize that it happened! i did it! it worked! 

i talked myself into loving something that i hate[d]. 

listen to this:

i love winter. legitimately. sincerely. 

it took about a month. 

and it got me thinking about all the things i hate. 

when i first decided to love winter, i had to make a choice every five seconds to think about something good about winter instead of complaining about it--out loud to other people, and in my own head. i was constantly looking for something good to say about it. making lists in my car on my way to work of things i liked about it. the list had - 45 things on it for the first week. 

{i live in canada, it gets COLD here, cut me some slack.} 

but the point is not that.

the point is not even that i love winter.

the point is that i just realized that this month i've inadvertently trained my brain in a way of thinking that could be applied to any number of things, people, places, weather patterns, activities, music, et-cetera, and basically result in me being contented and cheerful all the time, as well as easy to please and be around.

it seems like something i should've gotten cased by now, something we all should've. but i think we as humans are whiny by nature and really actually quite love hating things. 

don't get me wrong, some things deserve hating. like country-pop music and onions. but some things, like winter, are really worth falling in love with. we'd just rather grumble and notice the inconveniences and discomforts instead of the fun and the beauty.

me, i'm going to think of something else i hate now, and start the whole thing over.