I know you’re cold, dear friend. I know your lips are chapped, your toes are frozen and your nose has been running since mid-September. I know the pipes burst in your bathroom, your car won’t start and you had to sell one of your children to pay for oil. I know your fingers hurt from scraping your windshield three times a day and that, with no children left to barter, you may have to sell an organ or two to pay the plow guy.

I know your body aches. You haven’t seen the sun in weeks, and it seems that every part of you, including your soul, has turned blue over the long, heartless winter. I know that there seems to be no end in sight — turn on the TV for solace and a grimacing weatherman will tell you about the record-breaking cold blowing down from the tundra. Mull a vacation, and all that you’ve spent on oil, repairs and barrels of ChapStick will make you cry.

I know spring seems like a concept that belongs to another galaxy — a theoretical thing they SAY is out there, but you doubt you’ll ever see it again in your lifetime. I know you’re aching, depressed and cold in places your little space heater can never reach. I know you feel defeated and helpless, absolutely undefended against the merciless winter that seems to be out to get you personally.

I know that if you’re reading this, it’s probably at your breakfast table while you’re waiting for the car to warm up in the icy driveway so you can make the treacherous ride to your drafty workplace. I know that you’d rather just stay in bed, hiding from it all in the fuzzy darkness beneath the blankets. I know that tomorrow, you may just do that very thing.

I tell you: You mustn’t give up. Even ice ages end eventually, and before they do, signs of better things to come twinkle on the icy horizon. You must ball your mittened hands into fists and stomp your booted foot. Rage! Rage against the cruel wrath of winter and defy its bull whip winds!

I find a little bit of math helps. Consider:

3: Weeks until February. That’s a mere 576 hours, give or take a few. And while February isn’t July, it also isn’t January. Get January in the rearview mirror and you’re that much closer to the end of the tunnel. February, while a menacing wench, doesn’t have the length or the bite of the months that precede it.

34: Days until the earliest beginnings of baseball’s spring training. Baseball eats winter like a snack. Even the cruelest of seasons can’t withstand the promise of green grass and men with bats. And it’s only 48,960 minutes away!

52: Days until March. Ironically, this is the same number of new swear words I make up every time snow blows down the back of my neck while I’m brushing snow off the car. March is no picnic either, but it does contain the official start of spring, and by God, just evicting winter from the calendar will feel like victory. Remind me of this when we get hit with 18 inches of snow on March 20.

113: Days until May. That’s just 162,720 minutes or 9,763,200 seconds. Heck, you can probably hold your breath that long. And while you likely know three or four old-timers who talk about that time they saw a nor’easter the first week of May, you have to bear in mind that those old-timers may be using powerful narcotics. Once May is upon us, we’re out of the woods, I guarantee it. Of course, you should consider that I may also be using powerful narcotics by the time winter is through.

177: Days until the Fourth of July. At which point, we’ll all be talking about how fast summer is passing and how it will be winter before we know it. So just disregard this number. This number sucks.

2: Number of days until the weekend, at which point you can crawl back beneath your blankets and stay there, pretending you’re safe inside a sun-warmed hut on a really dark tropical island.

Say. Is there room for two in there?

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