Butter Month

 February is a short month.  It plays host to holidays such as Family Day and Valentine’s Day but for me it is 28 days of sheer struggle.  It is cold and dreary and long.  I detest going outside.  Invitations to go on winter excursions only make me shiver and sneak yet another peek at summer pictures on my new calendar.  I am far happier being miserable in February.  How do you deal with the cold dull ache in your joints and the constant cravings for stodgy foods? The rumble of the snow plough thundering up and down the road was getting on my nerves.  The month of February saw me clearing the snow off my car every single morning.  My wipers were stuck up like alien antennae so as not to freeze to my windscreen.  The taps in the old farm house I call home dribbled annoyingly every night so the pipes wouldn't freeze.  The furnace had broken down and there were subzero nights I slept in my coat and boots hugging a hot water bottle awaiting a part.  How do you get through this short depressing month?  It’s simple...you eat butter! 

Butter month as I affectionately named it was something I stumbled upon unwittingly.  Struggling with maintaining a weight loss and endeavouring to lose the last of my poundage I was blindsided by an undeniable craving for BUTTER!! I was cold and tired and sick of salad.  I opened the cupboard and there it sat in its bowl all yellow and soft and salty and inviting.  No matter what I did for the rest of the evening my thoughts would come back to the sight of that dish full of butter.  I tried oh so hard to sway my thoughts in other directions but to no avail.  The next thing I knew there I was standing in front of the butter bowl at three in the morning.  Butter is such an available vice.  It just sits there calling softly to you from its bowl every time a winter chill shudders through your body.  I of course answered its call.  Night after night I would wake up and hear that butter calling...calling...like the Sirens who tried to lure Odysseus to the island of Anthemoessa.   At the end of the day I am thankful that February is the short month.  Unlike Odysseus I didn't have any wax to plug my ears nor magical music from the poet Orpheus to drown out the sound of that infernal butter. 

Today the sun is shining.  I have turned the calendar and the vibrant greens of a March scene grace my kitchen wall.  Thankfully those twenty eight days have gone for another year.  Farewell Butter Month.  Perhaps another year I will worship another beautiful yellow entity.  I think the warm glow of an island sunrise is in my cards