It's beginning to look a lot like...

April.

It's 53 degrees out (that's Fahrenheit, not the temperature units everyone else in the world uses). Tomorrow's high is predicted to be 55.

I'd say any fool could see this is officially screwy weather. I can and I am not that knowledgable about the environment or climate. I'd say I know about as much fact as the average person on this issue. And yet to me, what I am witnessing is unnerving and disturbing. The solid month of rain which is swamping Spring and Fall. The violent thunderstorms in the winter, complete with tornado warnings (this is NEW ENGLAND Toto, not Kansas).

I have a deep sense of "this ain't fucking right" that I can't get away from. The smell of thawed earth in December, the sight of buds and blooms on trees in November provoke vague thoughts of melting ice caps and warming oceans, lost habitats and starving animals. Here and there memories of Katrina and the December 26 2004 asian tsunami emerge, calling to mind notions of weather gone very very bad.

Yesterday it was quite warm. Less than today but still not even a little December-y. I was in an outdoorsy store (I followed A___ in) and heard this one presumably outdoorsy kid who worked there saying to another young employee "I just LOVE this weather! I love love love it!" He was sort of dancing and jumping about when he said it. I wanted to throw him a hackysack. Actually I wanted to shove one down his moron throat. How the fuck can you "LOVE LOVE LOVE" this weather? It is FUCKED UP. I can see something like "golly it sure is nice not to have to worry about an ice storm but this is creepy". Or the kind of rejoicing relief a January thaw can bring after weeks of cold. But that ain't this. No. He love love loves that it hasn't even really become winter yet, that the weather is so fucked up our seasons are shifting and mutating, and it's happening often and persistently enough that it's becoming hard for even a skeptic to dismiss as a fluke. So why does this kid love love love that we've fucked up our climate? Because he was up at (insert name of impressive hiking trail in northern/central new england...probably something in New Hampshire) this weekend and it was AwwwwweSome!

Although this kid was anywhere from 5 to 15 years younger than me, it's that sort of attitude that I think of when I think "babyboomer".