a.k.a. V.J.

“I’m alright now, but last week I was in rough shape.”

~ Rodney Dangerfield

Take Dangerfield’s quote above, swap out the word “week” for “month,” and it would serve as a good summation of my February. Last month was tough.

Mostly, it was tough because of the weather. This area is currently recovering from the worst stretch of winter weather we’ve had in at least a decade. It snowed relentlessly for weeks. I’ve been through my share of epic lake-effect blizzards. Those storms tend to hit hard for a few days, drop a lot of snow, and then things go back to normal. This February was different. There wasn’t any one single huge snow event — just a continuous chain of small and medium-sized ones. During that time, it never got warm enough to experience any thaw. As a result, the snow piled up to unmanageable levels. It got hard to clear driveways because everyone ran out of space to shovel/blow/plow the new snow into. Roofs all around the county started to collapse under the weight of accumulated snow and ice, including a house just around the corner from mine. Most days, travel on the roads ranged anywhere from difficult to impossible as municipal plows struggled to keep up.

Even if the roadways had been clear, I would have been unable to drive on them for a couple weeks as my car crapped out a few days into all of this. The engine started running weird one day and the dreaded “check engine” light came on. Then it wouldn’t start at all. And I couldn’t get it towed to the shop for a while because my driveway looked like a battle trench on the planet Hoth, so there was no way for a tow truck to get to it. Also, just to spice things up, Jen’s car picked the same day to die. Needless to say, transportation became an issue in our household.

Fortunately, I was able to work from home at my main job, and taught my class remotely for a couple weeks, as the SUNY Oswego campus was getting pounded by all this weather as well. (In the old days, pre-2021, they used to cancel classes due to inclement weather. Today’s unfortunate students are merely instructed to log on to a remote session.)

So, for about two and a half weeks, I barely left the house. When I did get out, it was usually with a snow shovel in my hands. After a few days, the confinement started to get to me a little bit. It was very reminiscent of the COVID lockdowns. I began to feel cooped up and think of my condition as something like a state of house arrest.

After a while, it started to bother me how much the situation bothered me. I kept telling myself that my family was safe, the remote work situation was going off without a hitch, and I should be glad that I had a warm house to hang out in through all the storms. I was annoyed that I couldn’t go anywhere, but if someone told me I had to go somewhere in those conditions, I would have been outraged. It was irrational to resent the confinement, but as I sometimes tell my marketing students: It’s human behavior; it doesn’t have to make sense.

For those two weeks, I brooded, indulged in self-pity, worked and taught out of Jen’s sewing room, shoveled snow, got pissed off at the extended forecasts, and read a lot. Things were a little dark for a while, but these sorts of situations tend to dissipate if you summon the patience to simply wait them out. Grudgingly, I waited.

Eventually, the snow stopped, then we had a prolonged thaw. The driveway gradually ceased being a frozen obstacle course. My car made it to the garage and the fix was much simpler and less expensive than I feared. My daily routines and levels of human interaction were restored. Yesterday, the temperature in Syracuse broke 70. Next week is Oswego’s Spring Break.

As things stand now in mid-March, I’m breathing easy and life is good. I’m alright now…but I tell ya, last month I was in rough shape.