Diagnosis: Cabin Fever
1. You’d ride an icebreaker rather than stay ashore one day longer. (See Bob Melamud’s feature story, The Coolest Ride up the Bay.)
2. The visiting swans and snowy owls had boots and sweaters shipped in from the tundra.
3. Need a loan to pay your bird (and squirrel) food bill.
4. Holiday decorations have been up for so long a neighbor asks if you’re early this year.
5. The most common-colored car? Salt gray.
6. You study the weather reports of points south with envy and despise your snowbird friends. Tampa, 77! Miami, 82! San Salvador, 92! “Why am I here while they’re there?”
7. You study the weather reports of points north for comic relief. Watertown, New York? Minus 29 yesterday! “If we lived there, I’d have already moved.”
8. You suspect you’ll have to wash your wool socks before it’s time to burn them. Close associates second your suspicion.
9. You’d like to burn your whole winter wardrobe. When you’re not watching the winter Olympics in balmy Sochi, you look in on your summer wardrobe to remember when.
10. You’ve realized the overlooked solar potential under your boat’s white plastic winter wrapping. You’re ready with a ladder and a pitcher of margaritas for the first day the sun shines.
11. When the temperature tops 40 degrees, you proclaim a heat wave.
12. You develop a new appreciation for muck, which is far more beautiful than snow.
13. Communing with nature means measuring the height of your upstart daffodil leaves.
14. Your seasonal fashion statement: Shorts with boots.