Where's Winter?

I love winter.

No, really. You don't understand. I loooooooove winter!

I live for the first snowflake of the season. My heart rate rises and I smile idiotically for hours as I kneel on the sofa, parting the sheer curtains with one hand, and gaze at the millions of tiny, individual flakes swirling in the air. I love the carpet of snow that muffles the city noise and sticks to the bottom of my boots. I am totally addicted to checking the weather forecasts from December to April with hope in my heart. And when I read "10 cm expected, " oh, the joy! I even have books on snow. Okay, now do you understand?

So the drama unfolds when we don't have any snow in our typically frigid white wonderland (that is, Montreal). I think I have SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) for the first time. Although SAD, a biochemical imbalance in the hypothalamus, is caused by the decrease in daylight hours, I think that it must be worsened by the lack of snow. I mean, there's no extra white to reflect what little light we have and give off that eerie glow at dusk. With no snow and mostly rain, there's no good reason to go outside in the few daylight hours we do have (not that they're very bright days). What are we going to do, build a rainman? Go puddle hopping in temperatures hovering near freezing (but rarely dipping below that illustrious 0, especially when precipitation is forecasted)?

And now I find myself curiously detached from the activities in my life. I'm just not motivated to go out, to make plans or do anything that requires more effort than crawling from bed to computer (luckily I still have the gumption to work!). Even the holidays were flat for me--a person who usually decorates the house and bakes cookies for my entourage.

I'm blaming Global Warming, El Nino, Stephen Harper, SUVs and anyone or anything that is keeping my precious snow at bay this year.

But then again, maybe there's some kind of conspiracy to rid Montreal of snow... and redirect it to the prairies. Or even Vancouver, where they've gotten more snow than here, for goodness sake!

I've still got hope for some white coverage, but it's diminishing as we get deeper and deeper into "winter" and are still seeing temperatures of 5 degrees. Anybody know a snow dance?