'Tis the Season

Don’t get me wrong—I truly appreciate Florida’s winter residents. I know that they boost our economy and drive our property values up, not to mention the fact that they’re the citizens of our great nation who have worked and kept things going for the past however many years.

So I smile and wave. And hold the doors and pick up dropped change and don’t cut off slow-moving carts in the grocery store.

BUT.

I would like to share a few of the things that run through my head this time of year. Things I would never say aloud. Things I feel semi-guilty for thinking. Sort of.

My Forbidden Snowbird Comments

• Oh, no—is it Thanksgiving already?
• That’s a lovely apple. So’s that one. Yes, that one, too. Wow—it’s a whole bin of great apples. Now pick one and move!
• Put the Weather Channel on—I hear it was 60 in Michigan yesterday.
• It won’t kill you to be second in line at Walgreens.
• It will kill you to pull out into a road without looking. Believe it or not, that big thing in front of you—you know, the hood, the engine, the wheels?—that actually takes up real, three-dimensional space. If you stick it into a lane of traffic, IT WILL GET HIT. Just saying.
• Cook. Dinner. At. Home. Just once in a while. Please?
• Yes, the weather’s lovely. I waited through nine months of stifling, suffocating, energy sucking, sunburning, sweating, sauna-from-heck heat to enjoy this weather. I’m so glad that you’re taking up all the space at the beach, restaurants, the farmer’s market…
• Gas on the right; brake on the left.
• Don’t glare at my kids in restaurants. Since it’s season, they waited forty minutes for this table. Besides, we live here.
• How long until Easter?

And to quote the best bumper sticker ever….If it’s snowbird season, why can’t we shoot them?

[Note: I don’t mean that. We clearly can’t shoot anyone, and I’d never advocate it. I say this all with my tongue firmly in my cheek—that way my kids can’t understand how rude I’m being.]