McCanless column: I'm with Punxatawney Phil

I don't know about you, but, I think Punxatawney Phil had the right idea: crawl back in a hole and hibernate some more!

This has been a particularly brutal winter for us, and most everyone I talk to is thoroughly fed up with this weather. Enough already!

It could always be worse, of course; we could live in Washington, D.C.

I got an e-mail from my brother the other day. He lives in northern Wisconsin, where summertime is a week of bad ice skating. He is calling us all wimps because he has to go up to his top floor to look out over the snow that's piled eight feet deep at his front door. Well, good for him; just because he enjoys living like an eskimo doesn't mean the rest of us do!The first year I was in Salisbury was the year that it snowed every Wednesday in March. 1962 I think it was, and since I lived on Mahaley Avenue and walked to my job at Rowan Hospital, it was particularly annoying. I had just relocated from Atlanta, where snowfall was an affront to our Southern sensitivities, so snow was not something I had recently experienced. This year, I understand, even Atlanta has had its fill of nasty winter weather.

Well, sitting here complaining about it certainly isn't going to solve anything, so maybe we should all focus on spring, which is surely not that far away, and all our wonderful dogwood-scented air and the glorious azaleas and flowers that will burst forth, I predict, in a mere 40 days or so from now.

Accentuate the positive, as they say, and think springlike thoughts! Aw, the heck with it, pour another steaming mug of hot chocolate, curl up with a good book and keep thinking the good thoughts!

Anyone seen my shovel?

Jan McCanless lives in Salisbury.