crazy signs of spring

It's only 40-something out there and you'd think we'd gone mad. I know I have - mad with ecstasy. Check out what I've seen lately.

1. A suburban just drove by with a golden retriever hanging out of the front window.
2. Two kids were riding their bikes in tank tops.
3. The gutters are gushing with snow melt, and the sound of it is pure music to my ears.
4. I'm happy. Really.
   
5. The teenagers in the neighborhood are running amok in the night again. I love that about our neighborhood: white, privileged, well-fed, giggling gangs. It would be even more wonderful if they happened to be un-privileged and not white and still well-fed and giggling, but I take what I can get.
   
6. I didn't wear long underwear today for the first time since November. Really.
7. The thermostat has been set to 60 or below all day and the inside temperature hasn't fallen below 63.
   
8. And best of all, the snow people are emaciated. Click on this image to see details and have a a good laugh at these little teeny super guys:

That makes two

Someone out there on Minneapolis Metblogs has a very similar story to mine.

Sigh.

I am not alone.

Minnesota pretty nice and pretty insular

Minnesota Nice and other cultural nuances baffle me, as we all know by now, and though I've never been the popular kid, I have always been invited to more social occasions than I've initiated by virtue of being an introvert and truly enjoying the dynamic of being pursued (who doesn't?). Here, I've been initiating connections more than ever before. I've been pushing my comfort zone. Yet not getting many results. I just don't know what to make of it.

Yesterday I chatted with a seasoned social worker about my success making friends elsewhere in the world compared to making friends in Minnesota. Her accent indicated to me that she's from here or been here a long time. She said, "you know, you're not the first person to say that to me." She seemed a bit perplexed and a bit intrigued, like she had no idea what the experience would be like, but replied with a tone of hmm, isn't that interesting? It must be, what... cultural?

Today, a guest lecturer in my bioethics class was talking about the culture of risk. She's from Philadelphia, lived in San Francisco before she moved here, and said she'd never heard more people talking about risk and perceived threats to personal safety than in the Midwest. She's studied this phenomenon. Someone in the class said, "it's because people from Philadelphia and San Francisco move here!" Implying, of course, that newcomers make everything scary. She said she was just joking, but it seemed more like she was saving her ass.

What she was getting at, regardless of how she really feels, regardless of how much of her joke really isn't a joke, is that there really is something cultural here about sticking just to what you know and who you know. Insular = safe = good = Minnesotan. The guest speaker gracefully turned her comment into a talking point without putting her on the spot - an acquired Minnesota nice tactic, if you ask me - and got all academic about how the coasts have a history of trade and immigration, ports and interdependent industry, etc., which creates an environment where non-native doesn't automatically mean scary. Which hasn't happened in the Midwest.

It's kind of rare to find a native San Franciscan. Most everyone living there today has moved there. Seems like half of California speaks Spanish as their first language. Times like this, I miss it. I may, actually, resolve to making friends in Minnesota with people who are not from here. That's strategy one to not set myself up for failure.

I have no reason to go to Minnesota...

I'm able bodied, young, fit, stubborn and spry. Additionally, to help with the unfortunate physics of being inexperienced with all things winter, I have Yaktrax to help out with what I have not yet mastered. I will not sugar-coat my disdain of Minnesota winter weather, but if it weren't already clear by the tone of my previous posts, let it be known officially that I wrestle daily with the question, "Why the hell am I in Minnesota?"

Today it's gray and dreary outside. Actual temperature right now is -4.4 degrees, wind chill is -20 degrees and we've had forecasts of snow since last night. (I know: it's colder outstate. I know: all you locals have lived through -80 degrees. I know: some of you pay $500 heating bills every month. I know, I know, I don't care.)

Okay, here's what I'm trying to get to. Why in the world would you live here if you are elderly? Permanently in use of a wheelchair? Chronically ill? I'm doing just fine in the scope of health and agility, and I slip all the time on ice, tromp awkwardly through snow, whine into the wind, and bitterly bitch about sub-zero temperatures. I cannot imagine how difficult this must be for anyone who's just not feeling so great.

I just walked home and crossed paths with a very old man who was so hunched over he could not comfortably look up to see where he was going. He carried a very large, heavy bag and wore tennis shoes. I'm so saddened that he has to get somewhere, and it's so uncomfortable and super slippery outside.

Long before I moved here and toward the end of the phase L. and I can only refer to simply and fondly as "friendship," I actually said to her, "I have no reason to go ever to Minnesota. Except to see you, I guess."

And now I live here. Indefinitely.

It sure is amazing what we put up with. The trade-off is unquestionably worth it - success, happiness, family, love, clarity, direction, purpose. I'm just not sure if the putting-up-with gets more arduous or more tolerable with time. By the time I'm old and frail and dependent on devices for mobility, I really wonder if I'll have grown to ignore or (gasp!) even enjoy November through March.

Mango salsa in January

In an attempt to momentarily cure our winter weather weariness, L. initiated the making of a mango salsa for dinner last night. It included: fresh mangos, jalapeño pepper, cilantro, avocado, and lime juice. It was so freaking good that we ate the whole bowlful, first scooping properly with chips, then devouring it with spoons, and then licking the bowl (just kidding).

The ingredients seriously mocked our memories of 10-inch avocados and over-abundance of mangos we grew tired of eating in El Salvador. Not to mention that for four years on any Saturday of the year, I could walk to the farmer's market in Oakland and hand pick the cheapest, freshest, tastiest, most organic produce in the region from the people who'd grown, picked and delivered it.

In January in Minnesota, you settle for the produce at the co-op that has been picked green thousands of miles away and rattled to some version ripe-ness in a semi-truck, passing various inspections along the way. And you banish away your memories of the way life used to be. You pay a fortune for these hard specimens of tropical fruits, cart them home with visions of culinary dreaminess, and devour them in one sitting while snow falls outside.

In October, I was seriously tempted with the idea of eating only locally-grown foods forevermore, so help me Buddha. Last summer, L.'s sister loaned me the local food diet book written by Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and I was inspired to adhere to my ideals. I always try to choose local over not local. But recently I went grocery shopping, and L. opened the fridge and said, "where's the food?" I'd managed to get hydroponic lettuce and beets, local cheese and bread, and not much else.

Buying locally is really hard to do in Minnesota in the winter. I could, potentially, spend all my free time driving all over the place and maximizing my "local" purchases. But, then I use a lot of gas instead of walking three blocks to the nearest store - and that doesn't make any sense. Once in a while, though, far-away grown mangos and cilantro and avocados in winter are great stimulants for SANITY and HAPPINESS.