There are no free lunches in nature

I guess the real saying is that there are no free lunches, but about a year ago a coworker bought me lunch.  A week later he quit his job, and I haven't heard from him since.  Free lunches, like the Sasquatch, do exist...and they are both delicious.

It would appear that Atlanta is just going to skip winter this year.  This is awesome and foreboding at the same time.  Aweboding, if you will.  Here's my reasoning and an explanation for the title of this post - 

Nature is a perfect and very large, unforgiving example of Newton's third law - the one about action and reaction, just so you don't have to shamegoogle it.  We all know people who are super strong but not very smart, super smart but completely unable to socialize, super funny but lacking in potential (that was written on the inside of the last birthday card I got from my mom), and so on.  I've heard stories of people who had surgery to stop their head from sweating and a few months later realized that their armpits were like a horrible car wash.  Nature doesn't give freely.  Nor should it.

So blame the mild winter on global warming or whatever.  I don't believe in global warming, but I don't really believe in anything except Sasquatch.  Fact is, if we make it through March without a decent period of freezing-ish temperatures, spring will be here and I'm nervous. Here's why:

The plants in my yard are supposed to go dormant or die or whatever it is they do that ends up costing me a bunch of money in the spring.  So far they're just out there basking in the mild temperatures, drinking my beer when I'm gone (petunias are notorious alcoholics), and basically giving winter the finger.  The trees in our yard have confused little buds poking out of the branches, and the squirrels are running around like they own the place.

One squirrel was sitting in the yard making that barking noise that is adorable until the seven millionth time, and I found an orange in the kitchen and threw it at him.  Surprisingly it was a direct hit and couldn't possibly have been a more redneck move unless I had thrown a crushed (domestic) beer can at him.

Don't worry, the orange was already all dried up and gross.

Anyway, I'm thinking that this summer might be a tad sucky because if the plants haven't done their usual circle of life deal, neither have the insects, reptiles, arachnids, or birds.  I have noticed that the birds around here are cacophonous right now.  I was on the phone the other day and the person on the other end asked me if I had moved in with Heidi Fleiss (she, like all insane people, has a lot of birds).

It really is hard to hear oneself think around here...and I'm out of oranges.

My prediction this spring and summer is a light biblical-style apocalypse consisting of but not limited to mosquitoes as big as your hand, abusive petunias, and an abnormal increase in the number of androgynous teenage pop stars and the manufactured music they bring with them.  There will also be an outbreak of some strain of "pandemic virus" cutely named after an animal to keep the hysterical people occupied while the rest of us earn a living.  We've already used Monkeypox, swine flu, bird flu, Bieber fever, and hamsterlung, so I'm going with Flyarrhea because it's catchy.

So enjoy the winter.  I'm not a doomsday kind of guy, but I have a feeling that mother nature isn't giving us a pass just because we exchanged our small recycle bin for a big one.