2 i get a little warm in my heart when i think of winter

they say the snow is coming. it hasn't.

i'm a bit of an authority on this, having run to the window every five minutes for the past two days to check on a blizzard that has apparently stood me up.

once it starts it isn't going to stop and i'm a girl with leaky boots, so i shouldn't complain. i could use a week to prepare. i am not yet winterized.

but still... winter's coming! a fairly obvious and expected thing given that it invariably happens about this time every single year. and yet, my irrational excitement knows no bounds.

i am, like, seriously EXCITED.

to the extent that tonight, for a brief moment just long enough to be embarrassing, i smelled someone's fire and closed my eyes and got all nostalgic about the long winter nights of yore when i practiced long division curled up on a collie by the hearth.

then i opened my eyes and realized i am a sentimental fool. this was not the old familiar, comforting smell of smoke and cinder. it was a neighbor cooking barbecue chicken.