You know, I really do hate winter. Sometimes I think, Hey, maybe it’s not so bad, really, like maybe it’s just gotten to be a habit to say that I hate it, when truthfully there are plenty of good things about it to appreciate that I’ve let my bad attitude obscure. But no, after much consideration, I have concluded that I do indeed hate winter, honest and for true.

For one thing, as I type this entry it is ten minutes before three o’clock in the afternoon, and it’s dark outside. Not only that, but we’re still three weeks away from the darkest day of the year. I don’t know about you, but it’s plenty dark for me already. Yeah, I could light candles, yeah I could learn to embrace the coziness of it, but most of all I’d like just to go into hibernation now and wake up when spring has sprung.

For another thing, you can’t just up and go anywhere this time of year. If you’re planning to drive–if you’re driving our car, anyway–you’ve got to plug in the car no less than an hour before you want to leave in order to be assured that it will start when you’re ready to go. Then, before you can leave, you must spent a minimum of ten, and sometimes as much as twenty, minutes standing outside in the freezing cold, scraping and brushing ice and snow off the car windows.

If you’re walking and taking the kids–I’m doing both because my husband is out of town on business this week and I lack a Swedish driver’s license and a live-in nanny–going out and about is possibly even worse. Yesterday I had to go to the grocery store, so I spent ten or fifteen minutes bundling Tage up in all of his winter gear (thank goodness Lydia can get herself bundled up by now), outfitted myself appropriately, packed Tage into the stroller and set off trudging through the snow in the direction of the store.

Once we were in the store, it didn’t take long before I started feeling that stifling overheated feeling that is a standard when shopping in the winter. There’s just no way to avoid it when you come in from the cold, dressed for the winter chill, and have to spend twenty or thirty minutes bustling around inside a warm and crowded store. I get a little panicky when I feel like that, and then I get even more sweaty and uncomfortable.

By the time were were in the checkout lane, I could hardly wait to get back outside into the Arctic air. As soon as we were outside the doors, we stopped for a moment so the three of us could share in guzzling the cold orange soda we had bought to stave off our shopping-induced dehydration. Welcoming the chill this time, I stripped off my hat and gloves and unzipped my coat, then we set off again for home, through the dark and the snow.

Sorry, all you winter lovers, but that’s just way more effort than I ever want to expend for a pack of diapers, a loaf of bread, and a couple of liters of milk. Small wonder, then, that I also bought a big bottle of Fanta, a box of ginger snaps, and a package of pretzels, eh? I’d say we earned them.