Dear Mother Nature,

Please find enclosed 6000 tons of snow that was mistakenly dropped on Edmonton this morning.

Look, there are rules. There's supposed to be a natural order--i.e., things happen in an orderly fashion. First you have summer, which is when it is hot. (You did get the hot part right this year, so kudos on that.) Then after summer comes fall. Fall is when the temperature gradually cools, and when the leaves turn bright colours and then fall off the trees. The leaves have not fallen anywhere. They haven't even changed colour. I'm looking out my window right now at bright green leaves covered with an inch of snow.

See that? You know what I was planning to do today? Yard work. I was going to pull some weeds, see about harvesting some of the fruit on those apple trees, and mow the lawn. How am I getting a lawnmower through that? Eh?

And we haven't even got to the "gradually cools" part. Just over a month ago it was 34 degrees. It is now snowing. This is not normal--this is the meteorological equivalent of going from uncomfortably clingy to storming out of the restaurant before you're even done your appetizers. Have you gone off your meds? Is this some kind of juvenile prank? Did you misplace your glasses, and you were looking at the calendar, and it was pretty blurry but you were pretty sure it said 'November'? I mean, ideally we'd like to wait till December for this much snow, but this is Alberta. We are farther north than you probably intended Homo sapiens to live, so we'll cut you some slack. Not this much slack. You're taking all the slack and a great big chunk of arm with it. I'm not even sure where I put my winter boots. I haven't bothered to look for them yet, since it's the fricking middle of September. I should have to worry about forgetting to bring a sweater with me and finding the breeze uncomfortably cool. I should not have to trudge out to the shed to dig out a damn snow shovel.

This is not normal. It is seriously messed up. And I don't mean to get into personal issues here, but I think you might need professional help.

Yours sincerely,

Christopher Leapock