Someone found my motherf***ing work pretzels.

I have a sore throat.

Global warming my ass.

Who’s the bitch now, New York?

The dreaded season is upon us here in NYC, and I for one am not off to a great start.  I have serious doubts about whether or not I’ll actually be able to make it through another winter here.  (Wasn’t I just writing about fall?!)  And, if I do, whether or not those around me will.  Because several times today alone, I have felt murder in my heart.  There was the twelve-year-old boy who yelled at the twelve-year-old girl, right as I was walking past and therefore right in my ear, “SLOW DOWN YOU FUCKING RETARD!”  There was the SUV who careened around a corner, cutting me off and *almost* making me spill my morning coffee.  There was the man wearing headphones who walked by me on the street and inexplicably muttered, “White bitch!”  And then, of course, there was the unseen pig who found and ate my work pretzels.

Have you ever been on a vacation so great that for weeks afterward, you use each day of the vacation as a reference point?  As in, two weeks ago today I was doing this.  Or I was watching this.  Well, two weeks ago I was lying here:

And later that day, we went wine tasting here:

And a couple of days before that, we were here, and here:

Oh, California.  Specifically, oh Avila Beach, oh Paso Robles, oh Santa Monica, oh Santa Barbara.  You seem so far away now as I sit in my apartment in wintry New York.  The apartment rendered hot as hell by the recent pipe-altering construction experience, another form of hell.  I sit here as the sky darkens at 6 pm and think of the long months ahead: months of ice and snow and gray.  Months of scarves and gloves and hats.  Months of dry skin and sore throats and swine flu.  I think of this and I want to wrap myself in a blanket and hibernate until May.

BUT!  Then I think of Fifth Avenue lights.  Of Starbucks red holiday cups holding pumpkin spice lattes.  Of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.  Of this:

And that helps a little.  At least enough to make me not want to kill anyone.  But I’m going to need a lot more help than that to get through the next few months.  Sometimes I truly fear the person I can be on a bad day (bad being determined by my parameters).  It makes sense that the prayer I send up most often is, Help me, Lord. Help me get through this winter.  Help me not get sick.  Help me not to be so ruled by what’s happening around me, especially by what the jackasses do.  Help me to be as good to my friends and family as they are to me.  Help me not to be the worst version of myself.

I know I always need Jesus, but I need him more than ever during a New York winter.  And I am committed to one more of those, which sometimes feels like entrapment.  It feels wrong.  But then I leave my sweltering apartment, bundled up in winter gear, sweating underneath, and I walk out into the gray and feel the cool wind brush my face.  And at that moment the seasons make sense and life feels new and God gets to know more than me and my apartment may be finished, but I’m still coming along.  And I just might make it through this part.