The temperature was in the minus digits when I let the dog out this Tuesday at 6 a.m. Too cold, too early in the season – and it’s not officially winter yet (Dec. 21 is the Winter Solstice).

But after successfully starting my car remotely, I started thinking positively about the weather. I climbed into my semi-warm car with the heated steering wheel and heated seats and drove to work on sanded and ice-free roads. Much better than earlier this week when a big tree fell on wires in our driveway and my wife and I couldn’t drive past the scene. After calling Central Maine Power about the predicament, our kind son-in-law picked us up to bring us to work. CMP was on cleanup duty within the hour.

And my co-worker Sarah Morley, as she came through the door, shared a funny social media story about a guy cleaning snow off his car and shoveling while saying “We don’t have alligators, we don’t have snakes, we don’t have mudslides,” etc., etc.

We live in Maine and everyone knows it snows and is cold in the later and early months of the year. Mainers know how to deal with the “winter” weather – another co-worker was late on Tuesday due to car problems and waiting for AAA to come to the rescue – so it stands to reason that if incidents do happen, keeping a positive attitude is the key to getting through the day – as I was waiting to see if the weather reporters were right in that Wednesday was supposed to reach 40F with some rain!

So it’s only the second week in December. Dress warm, stay dry, don’t overexert yourself, stay on your two feet as well as possible, and think of spring.