I was recently at the local store when I noticed a strange thing: Valentine’s Day items were slowly being edged out by Easter offerings. I checked the date quickly to see if I didn’t have some kind of two-week memory lapse and yes, it was still the first week of February. My internal clock was correct – there was still time for romance, albeit right next to my Easter instincts to look for chocolate galore, heart-shaped or bunny-shaped. I thought, my God, I will overdose on chocolate this year. What a quandary.
I thought Groundhog Day is supposed to be sometime around this season, will he appear instead of the bunny? Aside from disappearing back into ground for another several weeks of winter, which is what I would do if I were a groundhog, what respect does the ground rat have over affairs of the heart and cuddly bunnies? All I know is that all these special events are too close together to enjoy due to their rapid succession in this years’ calendar.
Back to what’s happening in the Rez… It seems that many people are generally lackadaisical about general referendums and local politics. The fact that council routinely passes borrowing bylaws putting us further into debt to build homes for people who can’t afford them receives only an occasional yawn from those who might question the need. If we just passed a borrowing bylaw a few months ago, why is there another one now? The truth is, it happens every year folks, borrow to build homes to live in or hunker down in shanties, what will it be?
Another local phenomenon is directly related to the Christmas holidays. It’s called starving January, when all those presents catch up in the mail in the form of credit payments, and the question is: keep the credit or go without paying to cover for necessities? Why is it that when Santa disappears, so does the bank account? Is there a connection? Why can’t Christmas be in the summer, like in Australia, so we can go for a swim right before hanging the stockings? Some mysteries will remain forever unsolved.
Now that February has crept up on us, the hearts are out in full force, demanding attention and affection and more chocolate. Isn’t there a holiday that isn’t celebrated with sugar? Can’t we replace all those sweets with protein, a ptarmigan heart instead of a chocolate one? A snared rabbit instead of an Easter bunny would be more appropriate for those stricken with diabetes.
As for that dumb groundhog, someone should have shot the cantankerous critter before it hopped back into its hole in the ground, because it’s damn cold out there right now. When will the spring months poke their heads out? Where’s global warming when you need it? Why can’t those scientists (I learned that scientists are a generic term, used every other minute in An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore) get it exactly right once in a while? Aren’t they scientists anyways, aren’t they supposed to be exacting? As far as we are concerned, it’s just another humdrum winter and we’ll wait it out somehow.
