Ever since I can remember, I start feeling like a 6-year-old stuck in a boring antique store with my mom right around the middle of March. I am antsy and cranky and am wistful for the days when it was totally appropriate to throw myself to the floor and start kicking and screaming (when does this suddenly become socially wrong?). Why?

Chicago winter’s are too damn long.

You know what I mean. You’ve felt it. You wake up in the morning and know that the weather blows slightly less than the day before, but isn’t nearly nice enough to wear flip-flops. You start thinking about camping, and laying by the lake, and tennis. Picnics in the park. The warmth of air at 9pm on a Tuesday night in June. Ice-cream trucks. All of your winter clothes start to look like straightjackets, and your kneelength wool coat feels like it weighs about 80 pounds.

Without fail, this time every year, I contemplate moving to another city with nice weather year round. Somewhere where 50 is really fucking cold. I spent 4 years of my life living in San Diego, which is like living in a bad dream of the same day over and over and over again. I know that, deep down inside, I require the constant state of weather flux in Chicago to live.

But, man, mid-March really blows.