Attitude is so often a product of our perception. Glass half empty? Glass half full?

But yesterday morning I discovered that writing description is also a product of our perception. Let me explain…

I did not want to get out of bed yesterday. Sat/Sun was spring forward Daylight Savings Time (which I personally think needs to be abolished because internal clocks are REAL!) I was tired and cozy and wishing to stay that way, for at least another hour, if not more. But, not wanting to be a complete Debbie Downer, I reminded myself how happy and cheerful I was in the evening when it’s still light outside.

Perception.

But you know me, this train of thought was a delightful slippery slope. I bustled around getting the kids ready for school, reminding them to wear rugged shoes, because now that the snow was melting–EVERYTHING is muddy. I know this because I can’t keep the car, the floors or the dog and boys clean. Very quickly I’d fallen into complaining mud mode. Wasn’t it just days ago I had begged for this warm, muddy weather because I was sick of the cold and snow? It was. So now I needed to adjust my expectations and my perception. *sigh*

Since I’m a bit of a weirdo, the self analysis got me thinking about how awareness of perception is involved in how we write descriptions. And suddenly I realized that the seasons were a great way to concisely illustrate how to avoid cliche and use your unique perception to write great descriptions.

Cliche Seasons: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter

Seasons Negatively described: Mud and Allergy (Spring), Bug and Humidity (Summer), Raking and Gray (Fall), Frigid and Shoveling (Winter)

Seasons Positively described: Warmth and Flowers (spring), Fireworks and Ice Cream (Summer), Cider and Pumpkins (Fall), Hot Chocolate and Pine (Winter)

Seasons by color: Pastel (Spring), Green (Summer), Earth Tones (Fall) and White (Winter)

Seasons by food: Irish Soda Bread and Easter Eggs (Spring), Fruit and Veggies from the Garden (Summer), Turkey and Carmel Apples (Fall), Christmas Cookies and New Years Champagne (Winter)

I could go on and on and on, finding new ways to use words to capture the seasons in a non-cliche way, but I think that gives you the idea. I would love to hear your perception description of the seasons in the comments.

Tags: cliche, description, Kim Sabatini, Kimberly Sabatini, perception, seasons, weather

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I was just a part of the Blizzard of 2015–which  didn’t quite blow into what would even be considered a hearty storm in my area. To be fair, in some parts of the northeast, they got completely walloped. But in my neck of the Hudson Valley, we only got a couple inches. No one’s power was out for a week and I’ve got my fingers crossed that the only injuries have come from a family member grabbing another family member by the neck during a hot headed game of monopoly.

But for today’s blog I’m not actually writing about the storm. I’m here to talk about why I would never want to be a school superintendent, a city or state official, a weather person, first responder in a storm or the driver of a snow plow.

It’s because the rest of the population is batshit crazy.

Don’t be offended. Just learn to laugh at yourself, because honestly, if we don’t laugh, we’re going to be very embarrassed. The poor people who hold the jobs responsible for these decision-making weather calls, have a snowball’s chance in hell of looking like a hero. Even the ones out there, braving the elements and putting in sleepless nights. They can not possibly win in the decision making game. And I repeat, it’s because the rest of us are batshit crazy. Hell, we’ve proven that just by how we play monopoly, right?

If you don’t believe me (but I suspect you know exactly what I’m talking about) I could pull example after example off the news, Facebook and Twitter supporting my theory of batshit craziness. The internet was flooded this morning with all kinds of deep batshit thoughts like…

-we could have had school.

-the roads were unnecessarily closed.

-we could have gone to work.

-our insane need to swarming the grocery store and the home depot could have been avoided.

I can only imagine the conversation that the couple from the Home Depot parking lot must’ve been having this morning, after their huge melt down yesterday, when their newly purchased, unboxed generator (they drove an hour to get) wouldn’t fit in the car AND THEY DIDN’T EVEN GET A FREAKING BLIZZARD.

It’s enough to make a person batshit crazy.

But here’s the thing, I’m pretty sure that if things had gone the other way, we’d all be bitching up a blizzard about our fearless leaders not being safe enough. In fact I heard that two weeks earlier when we were hit with an unexpected ice storm. There were an insane number of accidents on the road and NO ONE PREDICTED IT OR DID ANYTHING TO STOP IT!!! But we can’t have it both ways, my batshit crazy comrades. We can not complain about both sides of the same coin. I mean we can, but as you might suspect–that makes us batshit crazy.

For better of for worse, we’ve created a litigious, judgmental society and it’s unrealistic to expect the decision makers not to cover their own asses. It’s the culture, us batshit crazy people, have created. If you don’t like it, it’s time to change the culture. Or get your ass to college, so you can try your hand at being a meteorologist.

Today, or any day like this, instead of complaining, try thanking the people who stepped up to try to do the right thing. It’s a novel idea–but maybe we should appreciate them for doing their best to try to keep our batshit asses safe. Now go shovel your driveway or strangle whoever bought Park Place and Broadway.

Tags: batshit crazy, Blizzard, Kim Sabatini, Kimberly Sabatini, Snow, weather

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