I have a job at a company. They have certain expectations of me. Like for instance, they expect me to be there every weekday. I’m supposed to look like I’m doing things most of the time. And since they pay me, they expect a certain consistent output that makes them money. When I start not doing those things, I expect that they will send me off into the wilderness for not doing those things right.

I think it is high time we start expecting those same things from Mother Nature. Like for instance, we have certain expectations about the weather she should be providing. I accept and expect snow, cold, rain, and occasional winds during the winter. With those things, we get the holiday quadrant of the year, in which kids beg for candy in October, expect a Turkey dinner and defeating people in hand-to-hand combat in stores for stupid cheap TV’s the day after, and the constant socialization in December. If it wasn’t for those things, how would Mother expect me to hate the winter? I accept the constant bitterness of winter, because I expect that when it’s all over (March 20th, first day of spring), I’m done with the winter until October. We have an employment contract with Mother Nature.

Well, she has not held up her part of the bargain this year. It is now June 1st and I’ve had about enough of Mother’s crap. This year she got an extended overtime. I gave her the rest of March, because the groundhog was a little sleepy. I get that, because we are having a bit of drought.

But I expected April to be better. I expect March is little lamb/liony. But April is my month. It’s April Fool’s, which you might be interested to know, is named after me. Because I love playing pranks on people, and because of my constant tomfoolery. Then there is my birthday, Tax Day (my favorite day to complain about how people are robbing me blind) and Easter. It’s also when I usually get the most traffic on my bitter site, which is great because I love creating traffic jams.

But then May came and Mother just kept betraying us with her weather patterns. She sent out rain, cold, and even some hail. Like my favorite pun goes, “We’ve been through hail out here.” But the thing that makes me the bitterest is the wind. Wind is the worst weather thing because it makes everything worse.

I used to live in South Dakota, and it would get below zero all the time, but add a lot of wind, with no mountains to resist it, and you get -70 below wind chill. There is nothing chill about wind chill. You know that parka you bought in at Burlington Coat Factory for just the right cold day when you would go for an exhilarating snowshoeing excursion some cool winter day? Yeah, that parka might be awesome for that. For a day that is -70 below wind chill in South Dakota, that is useless. The wind doesn’t even ask nicely to penetrate right through that parka of yours.

It goes straight through to your bones and freezes them like Austin Powers did to himself in the 60’s. Well last night, May 31st, the last day of May and after Memorial Day (which is the unofficial first day of summer) and I was outside watching a baseball game at 8:30 at night when it should be 75+ and sunny, I was wearing a heavy sweatshirt, my wife was draped in a blanket, and I was shouting at the wind to chill the frick out. And when I said chill out, I meant stop blowing and start warming me up.

I think it is time for Mother Nature to get her employment evaluation. Don’t worry, I’ll be the one to tell her that she’s getting too old and we need to force her to retire. I’ll let her know that I think Daughter Nature is finally ready to take over her duties. Though Daughter Nature is not as attentive, because she is busy looking at Tik Tok, she will be better at being more consistent. In fact, she will probably just look at March 20th and say, “Hey Siri, make it spring,” and on May Day, just say, “Hey Siri, make it summer,” because she’s too busy posting on her Instanature to create any fun new weather phenomenons.

Who’s with me? I think Mother Nature would probably be a little happier as well. She could eat her porridge and look forward to her occasional visits from Granddaughter Nature and maybe ever let Grandson Nature try it every once in a while. Though he would probably just create a bunch of tornados like he does in her living room. Maybe we’ll just stick with Daughter Nature for now.

ARRRRRGGGHHHHHH

Bitter Undernatured Ben