Remember when you looked out the window for your weather forecast?

While I am as guilty as the next guy about being addicted to the Weather Channel's broadcasts about hurricanes, blizzards and tsunami's, I yearn for the days of old when you looked out the window and said, "Oh, it snowed last night we had better listen to the radio to see if school is off."

The forecasts are like watching a car crash. Let's face it. You want to look away. But you just can't! It all started for me when we lived in North Carolina and got two hurricanes in two months in an area that had not gotten a hurricane in 40 years. People had hurricane parties, mocking the forecasters. Being from New York, I thought they were all nuts and put my kids, my dog, my photos in our van and headed north. At the time I ran a daycare out of my home and mom's came with their children the morning the hurricane hit and left nasty notes on my door.

As I sat safely in my mother in law's home in upstate NY watching the town I lived in get plowed by Hurricane Bertha, I just couldn't believe that people mocked these warnings. But the old "cry wolf" story holds true. Hurricanes hit a particular area that is very small, but Mother Nature is a sick old broad and could change her mind any minute. So, no matter how many computer models we make she could still say, "Futt you and your computer models!! Here you go Wilmington - your turn. Hurricane Bertha!!"

So, my friend from PA stayed for the hurricane and said it was the biggest mistake of her life. They huddled in an inner hall of their home waiting for the driving rains and winds that sounded like a train to pass over their home. But that wasn't the worst. After it passed there was no electricity. It was 100 degrees out, 100 percent humidity and no way to get cool. The streets flooded from debris and the whole place smelled of rotten fish. So, I felt justified in my "yankee" decision to leave. But became addicted to watching weather news.

Now, we grew up in upstate NY and lived outside of Buffalo for many years. So, when we moved to Southeastern PA where they close school at the threat of a dusting of snow or if the temperature dips into the single digits, I thought I could kick my addiction. After all, where I grew up unless the school bus was pushing snow with the front bumper - there was school. My school's motto was, "Rain, snow, sleet or hail, Mohonasen District never fails." So, certainly the threat of deadly storms would be off my radar and I could walk away from the Weather Channel forever!

But, sadly, that is not the case. Now I watch it to see other people's misery and fear. I find I am disappointed when they are wrong and people don't get creamed with a blizzard or a hurricane misses us and goes off to sea. What kind of sick person am I?

Well, maybe it boils down to wanting the computers to be wrong and Mother Nature to be in charge. Maybe I just want to be able to tell what the weather is by looking out the window. Maybe I am darn tired of being warned all the time! Maybe, just maybe, I want to stick my tongue out at every computerized fortune telling computer model screaming out warnings about every gosh darned thing that might go wrong and just wanna live on the edge, not knowing, not being able to prepare.

I DON'T WANNA RUSH TO THE STORE TO BUY MILK AND BREAD EVERY TIME IT SNOWS! (Which is what they do here in SE PA ... I will never understand it since I would want candles, medicine, and an alternative heat source, having endured real blizzards, but that's just me.)

So, yea, I watch Weather Channel hoping for them to be wrong. I watch hoping the someone else will get hit by the blizzard so they can hone their survival skills. I watch routing for Mother Nature to futt someone up a little, not too much, but a little, so maybe just maybe we can all go back to walking out the front door and saying, "Hey, it's cold out today. I need a coat."