On a dark and stormy night, I died.  I should have expected as much, what with the dark and stormy night and all.

College taught me one term of literature that will stick with me throughout my life: the pathetic fallacy.

Some of you might know this already.  I didn’t know it, so I’ll share it here in case there are some, like me, who went many years without knowing it.  The pathetic fallacy is a rhetorical device used in literature, when the author uses the weather to set the mood for his or her work, as a foreshadowing of things to come.  For example, the way I started this post: the phrase “dark and stormy night,” prepares us for the upcoming bad news that “I died.”  This is, rhetorically speaking, a fallacy, because the weather doesn’t really care what happens to me in my life, yet I have made it mirror—or match—the ominous occurrences in the story.  {The “pathetic” part means that the weather is symPATHETIC to the situation in the story.}  Hence, pathetic fallacy.

Clear as clouds?  {Hey, I never professed to be a good teacher.  You don’t like it here, go get your own English degree.}

This is the part where I subscribe to every rhetorical fallacy I just pointed out to you: The weather hates me.

I know, I know, I just went on about how lovely it’s been up here lately, and how happy I am that it has warmed up, but now {cue whiny voice} it’s so windy!  Have you ever lived in a windy place?  I have.  And let me tell you, it blows (ho, ho!).  The wind can transform a lovely walk down the street into a desperate search for shelter—I have, on more than one occasion, pounded on a stranger’s door screaming, “Sanctuary!” {Not my proudest moment, obviously.}  The wind can ruin a perfectly lovely picnic in the park.  Excessive wind can, and has, broken many a kite string, leaving Poor Kyle and me staring forlornly into the sky as our afternoon of fun slowly minimised into a tiny spec, and finally, disappeared altogether.

Don’t get me wrong—I like a nice calm breeze as much as the next girl.  In fact, I’m a huge fan of a gentle breeze (especially gentle sea breezes), but here in Southern Alberta, the winds are nothing close to gentle.  They’re more like tornadoes.  Or torpedoes.  Or both.

The wind makes it impossible to enjoy springtime weather, and even more impossible to photograph the first signs of the season:

I wanted to show you how beautiful our trees are, but I just couldn’t get the camera to focus on the tiny new buds.

Even when I held the twig steady with my bare hands, the results were sorry. Blasted wind.

This would have been an amazing shot if the wind hadn’t made me blow it. {Those white spots in the background may or may not be our Christmas lights still up from December…  But I’m not saying a word.}

And, of course, there’s no point fixing my hair fancy if the wind is just going to destroy it (which it does).  I did it anyway, but you can’t tell.

See?  No use.

I got fed up with the wind and gave up trying to capture signs of life, but by that point, I really wanted to show you all how my hair looked today.  So, I went inside to take better pictures.  But…ummm…actually, that didn’t really help.  Instead, I just captured signs of poor photography:

Here’s my face.  I was trying to get a shot of my hair.

I tried a different angle, but that just made things worse.  {By the way, see our turquoise mirror?  [Who am I kidding, of course you see it—it’s impossible to miss.]  What should I do about it?}

At yet another different angle, my hair suddenly became the exact colour of brass.

Okay, I’m getting closer…

And that, my friends…that’s as good as it got.  How many Camilles do you count?

On second thought, maybe the wind doesn’t hate me, and maybe it isn’t the culprit for all my blurry pictures. Looks like I can screw them up all by myself.  Either way, it blows. Happy Monday!

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