Bugs

With the new spring weather finally starting to take hold, I am getting worn out of school. The warm weather outside make it close to impossible to stay inside, which teachers seem to make us do a lot. I hate sitting in a boring class while looking out a window to the magnificent warm world outside. It makes me mad. I just want to go lie in the grass and take a nap, what’s so wrong about that? (everything if you’re a teacher)

Like I said, the warm weather is finally starting to come around on a regular basis. This means that baseball is starting, school is ending, and the bugs are coming back. I loathe bugs. I wish they would disappear and never, ever come back. They are annoying, they are persistent, and they are always places that you don’t want them to be. I can’t stand them. They get on my nerves and stay until I am finally able to find some way to kill it. But it seems like there is an endless supply of bugs, so there is always another one willing to take the dead ones place, kind of like the Chinese army.

And this would be one of the few reasons why would continue to live in Iowa. The winter kills all the bugs, so there is a time of relative peace if you can stand the negative temperatures. The winter in Iowa is bug free, and it is fabulous. I love walking my dog and not having to swat at the millions of bugs revolving around my head (if my boots aren’t filled with snow). I love not having to chase a bug that followed me through the door around the house (if my feet aren’t frozen from the tiles). I love it (if you interpret love as I can’t wait for warm weather, but I still hate bugs). But when the spring weather brings around heat and water, the bugs multiply. It is almost an instant change. One day they are completely gone, and the next there are more then the entire human population of the world. If you are lucky, you might catch a warning and see one or two a day or so in advance of the outburst. And this is why I hate spring, bugs. There is no way to avoid them, there is no way to kill them all. They are always present, they are everywhere. I can’t stand bugs. 

Iowa Is Truly Amazing

Iowa is truly amazing. I am completely serious when I say this. I am not trying to joke around and pull your leg. Iowa is truly amazing. Let me explain.

The seasons of Iowa are some of the most extreme in the nation. The winter is horribly cold, and the summer is horribly hot. In the winter we get snow, wind, ice, and just plain cold (well below zero) temperatures. In the summer we get ungodly heat and humidity. So the in between times are actually halfway decent. Spring and fall in Iowa are two times of the year when it is bearable to be outside for any extended period of time. But then again, spring and fall kind of suck. This is because winter and summer spread out over great periods of the year, so on the calendar when spring and fall actually start, winter and summer are still present. Summer drags on into fall so by the time fall weather comes, it is late in the year. But the worst is winter dragging into spring. Spring in Iowa doesn’t really start until the end of April at the earliest, not March 21. We get snow storms on April 14 and 30 degree weather with a wind chill that reminisces of winter. It is not right. Any human in their right mind would move as far away as possible, immediately. So why is Iowa truly amazing?

Iowa is amazing because when spring finally does roll around, everybody is in a good mood. Not one person has the ability to truly be down. The winter is so long and drawn out and cold, that the warm, nice, sunny weather is mouth-watering. Everybody has put up with the winter, and everybody is glad it is over. Iowa has the power to make everybody happy. No other place has this kind of instant ability to change everybody’s mood. If you live in Iowa, you know what I am talking about. The winter is depressing and unavoidable, but the spring is amazing and irresistible. Iowa is unique and truly amazing.

Track

Track started for me yesterday. I have already posted about how absurdly early the track season starts, but now it seems like track season. It feels like we should be running outside, enjoying the nice warm weather and bright sunny days. But no, my first day of track practice was held in the gym, because it was too cold.

When I think of track, I think of running in shorts and a tee shirt around a track that is nice and warm. I don’t think of myself needing to wear tights and sweatpants and four long sleeve shirts just to begin to feel warm. I don’t think of running on a track that is covered in ice, and I don’t think of running by the still snow covered ground. This whole weather thing put a damper on my outlook of track.

But since I am running now, I am yearning for spring to fully arrive. I can’t wait until its 65 degrees and sunny on a regular basis only interrupted by a little rain. Rain in March I can deal with, but snow and ice is a different story. These long Iowa winters start to take their toll when it comes to decent weather.

I like running track. I know that may sound odd to some people, why would you want to just run? How could running be fun? But to be honest, I really don’t run all that much in track. I am a high jumper and hurdler. This means that the farthest I have to run at any meet is 110 meters plus whatever the approach to the high jump is. So I don’t go out and run, I go out and have fun because I’m around all these people who are running while I don’t really have to. If I said this to my coach though, that would not be pretty, but it is the truth. I like track because it is not as demanding as football or basketball, but I have fun nonetheless. I don’t have to spend three hours every night practicing and track practices are laid back and not very intense. So overall, I have to work hard at track, but I don’t have to devote my whole life into it like I do for football and basketball.

Track Already

Track starts Monday, February 16th. Wow. That is my first reaction. If we had not have had consecutive days of unusually warm weather at the beginning of the month, there would still be a foot of snow on the ground. The last time I checked, it’s hard to run in the snow. But nonetheless, practice starts Monday.

I will not be attending this first practice, or the first couple of weeks of practice for that matter. This is because basketball is still going on. The state tournament for basketball gets over in mid-March, by then there have already been a couple of indoor track meets. I don’t like how sports overlap like this. Give me a week off at least before I have to commit to the everyday running of track. This same problem occurred during the fall. Football goes into November if a team makes it to the playoffs, but basketball practice starts in mid-November as well. I think that if my football team would have made it to the state semifinals and lost, I would have had the weekend off before basketball started. If we would have made it to the championship, I think I would have missed some basketball.

This is wrong. Sports have their own season and should not drag on, or start up early. Track is a spring sport, the last time I checked, February in Iowa is the farthest away from spring you can get. Also, overlapping of sports gives the athletes no breaks. Coaches are always saying how you need to be in good condition and how you need to be well rested and ready to go. But when I have no break between sports, I never get the chance to rest. It’s always full go. It’s everyday, with no exceptions. I don’t like how coaches expect players to instantly switch from one sport to the next. I feel that it takes at least a week for me to transition out of one sport, and into another. But I know that if I want to make it to state in track, I won’t be able to take a week off, I will have to start right away, just like always.

Snow (or wind or cold) Days

I do not like snow days. Usually students are all excited to get a whole day off of school to do nothing. But after the first snow day, not me. I say after the first snow day because one snow day I can deal with. I can’t deny that I do like to sleep in, not do anything until basketball practice, then not do anything after basketball. It’s just like a Sunday. But once the snow days start pilling up, I don’t like them anymore.

First of all, I don’t like the weather. Recently, we have been getting out of school because of the cold and wind. I always say, the snow I can deal with, but the cold always gets me. If it’s just a foot of snow to get us out of school, I’m fine with that. But when it drops to negative 23 with a wind chill of negative 50 degrees, I just don’t like it. That kind of cold makes everything cold. It makes your house drafty, it makes walking the dog unreasonable, and it makes your car too frozen to start.

The second reason why I don’t like snow (or wind or cold) days is because it screws up teacher’s plans for school. I know that this may sound odd coming from a student, but I really don’t like when teachers have to adjust their class plans. They always say that the make-up days are added at the end of the 3^rd term, which does us no good in the 2^nd term. This means that if we have multiple snow (or wind or cold) days, the homework load in the weeks after gets very large. Since teachers don’t have the time to cover things in class, they give it to the students to cover on their own.

And the third reason for which I loath multiple snow (or wind or cold) days, is because I would prefer not to finish school in July. As of right now, with only three snow (or wind or cold) days, we are already going into the second week of June. This is wrong, but it will only get worse with the more snow (or wind or cold) days that get added to this year. I would rather do my work now, and deal with the weather, than have to do my work in June when I actually enjoy the weather.