weather or not

Though according to the calendar it is indeed winter, snow doesn't fall by the shitload here, and the one time we got any quantity--eight inches, according to our ruler--it was gone in two days because the mercury hit seventy actual degrees. Again. 'Tis season of wild temperature swings and fluctuations, up thirty degrees one day and down forty the next and hold on to your sinuses before they explode.

Now, changeable weather is very Midwestern, and so is a warm winter day, but this season has seemed excessively random, as if Mother Nature is just rolling the dice and seeing what comes up, flinging everything hither and yon. Perhaps THAT would explain what has invaded some local parking lots: A flock of seagulls! The birds, not the 80s band, though the presence of either seems equally unlikely in my currently frigid Illinois town. A flock of seagulls! And unlucky seagulls at that, given last Monday was balmy and tomorrow, for the first time in ever, promises a continuation of winter with the added attraction of freezing rain and then snow. Or, who knows, maybe the pattern will hold, and instead it will be 80. With those birds here, it already sounds a bit like the beach.