CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE: GETTING READY FOR THE GRAY & WHITE WINTER BLUES

If the rest of the planet is getting ready to hibernate, why do I have to stay awake?

Look! Up in the sky! It's...it's...it's a snowflake?

There weren't many snowflakes the other night and they didn't stick around long (thank God), but something in my psyche objects to digging out the ice scraper before Thanksgiving.

I guess it's time to stop pretending summer has just turned a little chilly and admit that winter is on its way.

Actually, while I know the winter solstice doesn't arrive until next month, as far as I'm concerned winter starts when the temperature dips below freezing.

I'm sure we'll see a few more 70-degree days before Christmas, so I can ease into the season.

I don't know whether it's Seasonal Affect Disorder (aptly acronymed SAD) or sunlight deprivation or just a general dampening of the spirits, but winter is not a good season for me. All that gray and white (mostly gray) gives me the blues.

I love Christmas as much as the next person. I just don't see why it has to be so cold to justify getting all those presents.

I'm in my getting-ready-for-winter phase, puttering madly around the house to prepare for who knows what.

What exactly mopping the kitchen, painting a bookshelf and cleaning all the junk out of the spare bedroom will prepare me for I'm not sure, but whatever it is, I'll be ready. I should be stocking the kitchen with food or cleaning supplies or pizza coupons.

People feel the need to be prepared in winter. I guess we all remember the old ant and grasshopper story.

Or snow brings out the Boy Scout in all of us.

I always love going to the grocery store when a big snowstorm is forecast and watching perfectly sane people come to blows over the last loaves of bread and jugs of milk on the shelves.

Nobody ever buys peanut butter, though, or bologna or anything to put on the bread. I guess if the end comes during the blizzard, they'll die eating bread and milk.

In summer, you'd at least be able to drive through some place for a cheeseburger before Armageddon struck.

After the snowburst the other night, many of us here at the Southeast Missourian went out to find our cars coated in ice.

Not a nice feeling. But I did get to experience a certain moral smugness when I was the only one of the newspersons with a scraper.

That's balanced, though, by the knowledge that I never clean out my car. There are probably fast food bags left from last winter somewhere in there.

I was digging out my heavy sweaters the other day when I realized that my favorite, a red cashmere tunic, was missing. I looked everywhere, even the bathroom, before I noticed the cat curled up comfortably in the spare bedroom closet. Something dark and fluffy was bunched up under her.

Sure enough, it was my cashmere sweater.

A dog would have snagged an old flannel shirt. Only a cat would actually go for the cashmere.

Well, a cat and now the dry cleaner.

Part of the problem is I'm never really fully awake after Thanksgiving. Winter is the season when the earth sleeps, preparing for the bustle and blossom of spring and summer.

If the rest of the planet is getting ready for a long winter's nap, why do I have to stay awake? It's not fair.

But once the snow and ice actually arrive and stay for a while, I'll be tooling around in it.

Once I convince the cat to go out and clean off the car.

~Peggy O'Farrell is a copy editor for the Southeast Missourian.