And the madness begins

Summer in St. Louis (and possibly the entire northern half of the U.S.) is insane. All this pent up energy from sitting inside all winter, watching TV, and eating and eating and eating, tends to cause one to go insane with activity during the summer months. I am no exception to this madness. As of the first sign of spring, the calendars begin to fill up. All winter, weeks can go by without any festivals, events, get-togethers, parties, or even simple happy hours. . . no one has any desire to go anywhere but work (and I wouldn't call going to work a desire, but more of a necessity) and then home to curl up with a warm blanket, the TV, and of course, food (hence the reason I've gained so much weight this winter). It's just miserable outside - the wind, the snow, and worst is the ice. Trips are made to the grocery store only when there absolutely nothing left in the house to eat and then only after 12 layers of clothing and almost as much griping. Low gas lights go ignored with the hopes that there will be one day of respite in the frigid air in which one can fill their gas tank without getting hypothermia. And then just as you think you can't take another day of the weather, the emails begin: Party, May 13th, Happy Hour, April 27th, Bowling Gathering June 24th, Float Trip July 15th. And the madness has begun. Let's call it another form of March Madness, this one not involving endless combinations and permutations (props to the math geeks who know what that stuff means) of brackets, but visions of springtime and an eventual warm up into summer and the madness to get one's calendar filled with fun social events to defrost the bones and provide happy memories for when next winter hits. I swear this is the only coping mechanism to make it through the winter - fill up the summer calendars with all possible forms of fun so when the winter hits one can just sit back and enjoy the memories . . . under the blanket, in front of the TV, and eating, of course.