Winter's on the wane, but it isn't over yet, and you've got cabin fever.
You know the symptoms. You feel desperate to get out of the house. You'd like to go for a walk, but you're tired of slip-sliding on ice-coated walkways. You wish you could fly away to someplace warm and sunny, but the kids have school, your boss needs you at the office, or the bank account says, 'No, and that's my final answer.'
What do you do? Stay indoors and knit socks? Watch re-runs of Blue Lagoon and Beach Blanket Bingo? Repaint the famly room?
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We randomly polled a number of winter-weary Connecticut residents to ask how they are combating cabin fever.
Elizabeth Keifer, Avon resident, professor of English at Tunxis Community College in Farmington
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"My condo has never been so organized. Getting down to the minute stuff like going through all lipsticks and trying them on in the mirror and deciding if they stay or go. Socks are all matched and lined up. Folding my underwear.
Another antidote I have is to get outside. Adults don't play enough, and any winter is going to be long, dull and dreary if you don't interact with it. I walk outside, snowshoe, and make snow angels for my neighbor."
Paul D. Shipman, West Hartford resident, senior director of communications and government relations at the American Red Cross in Farmington
"I've resorted to thinking about spring gardening, dreaming and planning what I will plant, transplant or divide when spring arrives. Around this time of year, the people at Westmoor Park in West Hartford have taps in their maple trees for sugaring, and I'll take a walk there to listen to the sap running and remind myself that spring is coming soon."
Barbara Duva, Vernon resident, interior design consultant
"I've been napping a lot and watching movies." On her recommended list? "Avatar, Coco Before Chanel, and the scary alien movie The Fourth Kind."
Colleen Fitzpatrick, Simsbury resident, director of communications for the Connecticut Horticultural Society
"Exercise always makes me feel better -- I've tried snowshoes for the first time this year and love them. I play platform tennis at Simsbury Farms. And the town does a good job of trying to keep the walking/bike trail along Iron Horse cleared, so I've been running. My snowshoe group and fellow platform-tennis players have definitely been life-savers for me this winter.
And I'm a gardener. When I really start going bonkers, I think of the plants waiting under the snow and how richly they will reward us in spring. I've got my vegetable garden all planned out and my seeds ordered or bought -- thanks to the bad weather. I'm never this organized!
And I try to find laughs where I can. Like when my husband attacked the giant icicles on our house with a pair of pole pruners."
Scott Hoffman, Manchester resident, manager of Windsor Ace Hardware in Windsor
Asked if he has cabin fever, Hoffman replied, "Who doesn't? You've got to get outside into the sun somehow. I go out to get my food, and I walk to the bank."
Marisa Kingsley, Granby resident, employee at Plate du Jour in South Windsor and West Hartford
"I'm a bear in winter. I hibernate. I get into bed and read books. Right now I'm reading The Irresistible Henry House, and it's really good. It had been the winter of my discontent because I couldn't find a book I liked," but Henry House has turned things around. Besides, she says, in lieu of cabin fever, "I have spring fever."
Caroline Finnegan, Hartford resident, employee at Wethersfield's Comstock, Ferre in Wethersfield
"Cold-frame gardening research has been my antidote for winter this year. I love knowing that at some point in the very near future, I'll be able to put my hands in the dirt again. I've been rounding up my materials for the cold-frame. I went to a salvage yard in New Britain, rounding up materials. I'm building the cold frame this weekend. Planning and dreaming. Here at Comstock, it's also nice to have the seeds and the greenhouse. I go to garden centers. The jasmine is in bloom now. There are terrarium-making workshops. That's a great cure."
Phill Pane, resident of Canton, owner of Belforest Kitchen & Bath Inc. in Canton
"I keep looking for when golf season starts."
Jacques LaMarre, Manchester resident and director of communications and special projects for the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford
"I'm not really suffering from cabin fever as I have been outside shoveling non-stop. In addition, I have been really busy at the Twain House . . . Actually, I miss my cabin!"