Stuck

When you have cabin fever, your sense of humor becomes warped. You find yourself laughing hysterically at your children when they are so bundled up that they can't see anything and they have shuffled themselves into a very deep snow drift. You tell yourself that they look like an image from South Park and giggle some more and take some pictures before your rescue them.

And then your husband wonders why you haven't written anything on your blog in almost two weeks. And you tell him there's nothing to write about unless people want to hear stories of how I shake the thermometer, begging, pleading it to rise above zero degrees Fahrenheit,

and that my days have recently been sent sorting through the family history, some of which is not so much history as weird memories and most of which is truly history and a remarkable tale in images and words of how a family came from all points of the globe in the fairly recent homesteading past to create what we are experiencing today. You tell your husband that until you sort through these pictures and stories and get them ready to share with the world, there just isn't much interesting stuff going on.

"Then why don't you write about there being nothing to write about," he says.
Brilliant!

Did you know that the term cabin fever was apparently first associated with people who got sick in Ireland because they ate potatoes that were too wet after an especially moist growing season? I didn't either and I'm a little leery of that fact.

I am fairly confident, however, that cabin fever does relate to people being stuck inside for far too long due to unfavorable weather conditions in the great outdoors. It can cause them to do goofy things and, I have a hard time believing this, become irritable.
Now don't get me wrong, I love winter. I love snowshoeing and seeing the wildlife come in closer to the house. Hearing the coyotes howl on a cold star-filled night sends chills down my spine. What I do not love is when the thermometer does not even register because it is so cold and the vehicle whines when you start it and the wind blows and the weathermen tell us that even five minutes of skin exposure will cause you to become a frostbitten snowman.
With the busy growing season just around the corner, we recognize that winter is good for family time. And no matter what your lot in life is, we can all use more of that.