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Thursday, March 17, 2005

I've Had A Cabin Fever Relapse

By John Brennan
Mountain View Telegraph
    Spring is officially scheduled to start Sunday, but don't believe it. I'm beginning to think this is the year it never comes.
    And not just because of all the snow we got this week. That was just the frosting on the cake, so to speak.
    The last couple of months have been either too rainy, too muddy or too cold to get outside much, and my wife and kids have been climbing the walls.
    Literally. I came home from work one day to find my 2-year-old son on the ceiling, squatting like Spiderman and looking very agitated. Instead of shooting out little Spidey threads from his wrists, he was emitting threads of drool from the corners of his mouth. That's nothing new, of course, but this whole ceiling bit had me a little worried.
    His twin sister and my wife were in what appeared to be catatonic states— staring vacantly out the windows, unresponsive, occasionally twitching.
    Cabin fever was hitting hard.
    Everybody's been getting it. At the end of last week, when the weather got absolutely beautiful, people in the newspaper office were looking longingly out the windows, oblivious to ringing phones or people standing right beside them.
    All of the women in the office— who for the last six months had been huddled at their desks wearing sweaters or jackets, space heaters at their feet— had their shoes off and were practically prancing about.
    It was the brightest mood I'd seen in the office in months. Everyone was talking about how nice it was outside and what they were going to do over the weekend.
    I hope they got to do it, because the balmy weather turned out to be a cruel hoax— a tease before winter came back in a big way this week.
    Waking up to 6 inches of snow, after thinking spring might finally be right around the corner, gives new meaning to the Monday blues. And another 6 inches Tuesday morning made me want to go back to bed and pull the covers over my head.
    But I had to go to work, and then the e-mails started.
    All these people who got snowed out of work decided to use their unexpected free time to try their hand at newspaper work. Those letters to the editor and guest columns they've been thinking about for months or years but never got around to writing just poured out of 'em.
    If it wasn't letters, it was photographs of the snow— in their yards, on their cars, on their neighbors' cars, on their dogs.
    Don't get me wrong, I love getting letters and photos from readers. But how about spreading them out a little? I've got a couple of months' supply now, but these readers aren't going to want to wait a month for their pieces to get into print, so there will be the inevitable disappointed calls wondering why I didn't like their work.
    Then spring will really come and nobody will write anymore.
    At least the calendar says spring will come, but I'm not holding my breath. It'll probably snow for another month or two. Then I'll have to go home and wave my hands in front of my wife's face to snap her back from some tropical beach of her dreams to the here and now— and then go scrape my boy off the ceiling.
    And by the way, the next time someone says "Well, it's good, we need the moisture and all ..."— I'm gonna scream.
    John Brennan can be reached by phone at 823-7106 or by e-mail at jbrennan@mvtelegraph.com.