All Roads Don't Actually Lead to Rome

Now, I have a great deal of admiration and respect for my brother.
But he lives in Rome.
And I live in, well, practically Winnipeg. Winterpeg. brrrrrrrrrterpeg.

Do they know that its minus thirty-five degrees here?! MINUS THIRTY-FIVE?!!
And do they know what they are missing? I wish them well, but seriously.

I'm sure living in Rome can't mean health and happiness forevermore. I mean, when they get ready to leave for the office in the morning, they never have the privelege of watching their breath freeze in mid air when they go out into the dark to start their car. How can they possibly expect to develop any character? They never have the snowglobe-wonder experience of scraping the frost off the windshield. They never know the joy of one's shoulders aching from all the tension that the shivering, shuddering cold causes to the entire muscular system of the human body.

And that's just the human body.
Do they know what the kids found at school the other morning? A cat, scrunched up on a branch of the tree in front of the school building, frozen solid. Poor dang thing. Climbed up there trying to get some shelter from this relentless freezer and froze his ass off. I don't know who to feel worse for- that unloved cat, or all the kids who saw that ghastly scene. I can't help imagine that some of them reexamined their commitment to wearing short jackets, no hats, and zero mittens.

Then again, probably not.
Besides, we have a superintendent who looks outside his window every morning to see that its perfectly safe to walk to school in these temperatures. I bet people in Rome don't have that either.

They do have cats though. And I know that because my brother told me that the sound of a cat meowing woke him up one night.

Which made me think that maybe his window was open. Poor man.
I guess in Rome they have to sleep with their windows open. They don't have it good like us. Our windows have so much frost on them; we just scrape them every Friday and whip up mean lime margueritas. I bet they don't do that in Rome.

They have to do without frozen cat AND lime margueritas.
I should be spending a lot more time sympathizing with my poor brother. Like... What do they do on weekends?! Here, we've got it so good. There is a community ice rink right behind our house that we can look at outside our window every Saturday and Sunday. It's too cold to skate, but we sure can look at that ice rink. And breath some air! The same air that the furnace has faithfully cycled and recycled hour after hour since we shut the back door in August of '08.

And what could they possibly look at?! I hear that most of the buildings over there are pretty much condemned, so there's probably not that many places to go to.....

hmmmm... I used to admire my brother, but the more I think about it, the more I just pretty much feel sorry for him. Maybe I'll start sewing mukluks to raise money to bring them back here for the winter next year.

I mean, a man can only take so much time in Rome.