Don't try that: Try this!

Winter is about slogging through. Winter is two steps back for every tiny step forward. Winter is sniffles, frigid feet, fogged spectacles, and layers of stifling fleece. I'm already whining and we haven't even had a proper freeze yet. The temperature gadget on my computer desktop says it is 52° in the Rose City today. But with the damp sinus, chill bone factor, I would rate it ten degrees colder. And wetter.

I'm just pissed off because I stepped in dog poop this morning as I bravely lugged my laundry to the basement. Drat that wretched little neighbor! And her accursed dog, too! Dang it, I'm starting to sound like the Wicked Witch of the West. Grrrrrrr. Where is my book of spells? Maybe I can cause her to fall out of bed every morning at 4:00 a.m.

Last night I politely knocked on the wall at 12:30 a.m., hoping she would hear it and stop her incessant pounding. Her dog barked like a fiend on the other side of the wall. Maybe I can rig up something to knock on the wall every hour during the night. Her dog will drive her insane. No evil spells needed.

It's finals week at the career college. What, again, I can hear you saying. Didn't you just complain about finals week? Yep. That was ten short weeks ago. And here we are again. Most students have kept up with the workload. They are cruising into this last week with a smug look on their faces, especially the ones who are graduating: the proud soon-to-be owners of an Associates of Applied Science degree in blablabla. Others, however, are freaking out. I actually had to fill out a drop form on a student last week: one week to go and she apparently has bailed. I recognize the syndrome. I'm guessing she suffers from the I'm too scared to graduate and face the world syndrome. Failure to launch. I predict she'll either quit school and get a job at McDonald's, or she'll come back next term and take the class over again. And quite possibly bail one week before the end.

I get it. School is a safe oasis in a big scary world. I'm the last person to judge. Haven't I spent the last seven years in graduate school? Don't I complain every other post about how terrified I am at the prospect of finishing? Is not one of my biggest fears the fear that I will sabotage my years of effort, waste my $50,000 investment, by quitting just before the finish line? Is not my second biggest fear the fear that, despite all this higher education, I will remain unemployable?

Wreckage of the future again, I know. You can't trust a Magic 8 Ball, that's for sure. Nor a horoscope. Nor a weather forecast. But one thing I know: it's great to have plastic shoes that can hose off with water. If that is all I have learned from my day of whining, well, maybe that's enough.