36 days until spring

Spring is coming and it can't get here soon enough. Here are a few ways to tell it's been winter for TOO LONG!

You get out of bed in the middle of the night, not because you have to pee, but to let all the faucets run because you’re paranoid about the pipes freezing.

You don’t panic when you see your dogs running around the yard on three legs - it just means they have a case of cold “weenie feet” but don’t want to come back inside yet.

You don’t care if your gloves match. You’re just glad you can find a left and a right without holes in the fingers.

Your life seems to hinge on two words: weather permitting.

You worry about how you’re going to get to work. Once you get there, you worry about how you’re going to get home.

You’ve crammed two days of work into six hours to get home before an incoming storm, plus missed so much work because of inclement weather and impassable roads that working five whole days in a row on a normal schedule is a totally surreal experience.

Your car hasn’t been washed since November. No one wants to park next to you at work. You don’t care.

You have an emergency kit in your car with an extra blanket, flashlight, batteries and a package of Snickers.

You ate all the Snickers. In one day.

The first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do before going to bed is shovel snow.

You’ve shoveled the same snow drift 17 times. If you decide to give up and walk around it, that path will drift closed within 20 minutes.

You fondle your houseplants and think happy thoughts about gardening, warm soil, sunshine, flowers and weeds.

You put on long underwear, a turtleneck sweater, wool sweater and down vest . . . to sit around and watch TV.

You think about kicking your spouse out of bed and letting the dogs sleep with you instead because they're warmer, cuddlier and don't snore.

The thought of 40 degree temperatures is beyond exciting.

You know that yes, as a matter of fact, malinois CAN climb the walls.

By the time you put on your coveralls, extra socks, insulated boots, thermal jacket, scarf, stocking cap and wool gloves, you can’t remember why you were going outside in the first place.

You let the dogs out, they pee on the patio furniture two feet from the back door and run back inside before the door can swing shut.

You’ve slipped on a puddle of frozen dog pee.

You’ve invented new and creative combinations of swearwords while your vehicle’s front end and rear end are swapping places.

You’ve gotten stuck in your own lane.

Upon advice from your husband, you “punch it” to get through a drift in the lane and nearly end up doing a Wile E. Coyote into the side of the neighbor’s machine shed.

You prayed the neighbor was not looking out the window at the time.

You gaze at the sparkling white blanket of fresh snow covering everything and all you can think about are the three months of frozen dog poop underneath.

You’ve slipped on the ice and your first thought was, “Did anyone see that?”

Your second thought was, “I hope so because I’m going to need help getting up.”

You’ve used at least one gallon of hand and body lotion since November and there are six weeks of winter left to go.

You've witnessed 174 different canine behaviors that relieve boredom. At least 170 of them involve stealing articles of laundry and committing crimes upon them.

You can justify every last ounce of your “winter weight.”

You can calculate wind chill without looking at a chart, although once it gets to a certain point, it's just freaking cold and who cares.

You're in love with the guy who invented remote start on vehicles.

You realize you are spending an extra $20 a week on gas because you use the remote start so much.

You keep doing it because it honks off all your co-workers who have to go outside and get into a cold car.