It’s really cold in Indiana right now. We’re anticipating a high temperature of 10 on Sunday.

But you’d never know it was frigid February in the Hoosier state capital. I’ve never seen people so warm. It’s Super Bowl weekend, and everyone around here is feeling the love.

It’s like Christmas, only better because EVERYONE is into it. There are no religious limitations or political ramifications to rooting for the Colts. If you live here, you’re into it. Aren’t sports great?
My 18-month-old daughter and I, decked in our Colts jerseys, went to the grocery this afternoon. Everyone was wearing blue. Everyone was smiling. Everyone was polite to one another. Strangers were discussing their party plans for Sunday. The store was out of blue and white beads. They were out of children’s Colts shirts. They were out of Blue Curacao in the liquor aisle and Berry Blue Kool-Aid in the juice aisle. They were out of blue decorating icing, and I bought the last bottle of blue fingernail polish in the place.

Some other snapshots from around town:

• “Go Colts!” on a sign out front of the Garden Baptist Church and on the signs in front of every business on US36.
• “Happy Super Bowl Sunday!” on the animated marquee sign in front of Bridgeport Elementary School.
• A Colts rally in the frozen courtyard of IUPUI.
• Colts flags flying alongside or below the American flag on most of the skyscrapers downtown.
• Employees at my bank, my grocery, McDonald’s, the party supply store and my husband’s insurance company, all dressed down in Colts paraphernalia.
• A snowman on Raceway Road that had been spray painted with a blue jersey and the white horseshoe.
• Another snowman on a county road in Hendricks County that was wearing a Colts scarf and baseball hat.
• So many jerseys, sweatshirts, hats, and other Colts garb on everyone in town, but I was particularly delighted to run into a colleague of mine, a 60-something English professor, decked out in a Peyton Manning jersey as she lectured her freshman composition class.
• One of my students dyed her hair blue and spent hours at the salon getting blue and white beads braided into it. She also had her nails painted blue with white horseshoes airbrushed on them.
• A crayon-colored picture of a “rocket football,” Peyton Manning, and a Colts cheerleader, created by my best friend’s third-grade daughter and posted on Myspace.
• A battered car, painted in Chicago Bears colors, in front of a dealership on US40. The sign beside it read, “Beat the Bears for Charity.” (You could pay $5 to pound on the car with a hammer!)
• A big, blue horseshoe inscribed with the words “We Believe in Blue,” made out of particle board and hung on the front of a neighbor’s house.

Like everyone else in Indianapolis, I sure hope our team wins tomorrow. But even if they don’t, I have one thing to say to the Colts: Thanks for giving your fans a little warmth and sunshine! It’s been a blast!

I spent most of the night under a blanket.

The game was too intense for me, a 23-year Indianapolis Colts fan. I’d had my hopes dashed too many times. Very often by THAT team, the New England Patriots. A few other times by that OTHER team, the Pittsburgh Steelers. This time we were so close. One minute and four points away from a Super Bowl. One minute and four points away from erasing many years of disappointment. One minute and four points away from reversing Peyton Manning’s reputation as a QB who chokes in the big game.

I had already taken off my Colts t-shirt in agonized desperation during the 2nd quarter. I couldn’t watch many of the plays, opting to clean the kitchen (where I have no TV), do the laundry  (again a TV-free zone), or finally, hide under my blanket. My daughter thought I was playing with her, and she kept pulling off my blanket, exposing me to the anxiety of the last quarter.
And then Marlin Jackson intercepted Tom Brady.

23 years of waiting, and we’re finally in the big game! I get to use my horseshoe cake pan for a Super Bowl party!

GO COLTS!!!

I have found a benefit to all the nuttiness of the holidays! It does not apply to everyone, but I thought I’d share for the folks who could take heart from my discovery.

For my family, this weekend was wildly busy. We had company Friday night, two dinners to attend Saturday (my husband went to one while I went to the other), and a birthday party Sunday. I also had to teach my final class of the fall semester on Saturday morning.

We were so busy, in fact, that until this morning, I had no time to wallow in sports misery.

And I had an awful sports weekend. Wanna see?

1. Indiana University (my undergrad alma mater) lost to Kentucky. Close game, though.
2. Butler University (my Master’s Degree) lost to Indiana State. Another close one, but I was so disappointed. Not only had Butler been having a stellar season up to this point, most of my family and friends are ISU alumni, so I’ll have to hear it all through the holidays.
3. Indiana Pacers got TROUNCED by Cleveland. And that idiot Stephen Jackson added to his already glowing reputation by getting kicked off the bench by the saintly patient Rick Carlisle. Jackson has GOT TO GO! He and Artest have ruined our team.
4. Indianapolis Colts, well, that was just embarrassing.

My only consolations were that my New York Giants won and New England was embarrassed by Miami almost as badly as Indy was by Jacksonville.

But the great thing was that I saw only snippets of all my sports tragedies. I caught a couple minutes of the IU/Kentucky game through the window of a sports bar as I was heading back to work after lunch. I saw only the final scores of the Butler/ISU game and the Pacers debacle. And I was chasing my kids around a birthday party on Sunday, so I just saw a few plays of that Colts /Jags nonsense.

So today, I sat down at the PC to check out the headlines, and in looking at the scoreboard, I realized what a cumulative disaster I had, happily, missed because I’d been too busy to watch much of it.

For once, I can honestly say, thank heavens for Christmas stress!

Wow! You’ve really topped yourself, Rush! I thought you were pushing it when you claimed Philadelphia Eagles’ quarterback Donovan McNabb was overrated purely because he is black. But accusing Michael J. Fox of faking his Parkinson’s symptoms to sway voters? Perhaps you’d like to take a shot at Muhammad Ali? Too bad Christopher Reeve is dead or you might enjoy pushing his wheelchair off a cliff.

Way to exemplify the compassionate conservative.

Evidently, celebrities are not supposed to have a political opinion. (See The Dixie Chicks, George Clooney and Johnny Depp.) You get famous, you lose your right to free speech, especially if you’re a liberal.

By the way, this line of thought is also being extended to teachers: if you have any kind of audience, you should not talk about politics. You may have noticed a quiet but pervasive conservative movement in schools to silence any instructor voicing anything close to a liberal viewpoint. Granted, in public schools where children have little choice but to be in the classroom and they do not have the maturity to consider for themselves, politics ought to be a no-no. Of course, no one seemed to mind much when my 8th-grade science teacher distributed anti-abortion literature, complete with pictures of aborted fetuses.

But I digress. Perhaps it is not Fox’s celebrity and loving audience that upset Limbaugh. Perhaps it’s the fact that he is so ill. That is, after all, what infuriates your friend Ann Coulter about him. You and she seem to be equally frustrated by the fact that you cannot attack sick people “because that would be questioning the authenticity of their suffering” (Coulter, Godless). Oh wait! You did attack him! And you did question the authenticity of his suffering. So it’s not his illness?

Maybe you’re just upset because Michael J. Fox is a nice man. And you’re not. Hmm…nope. That’s never bothered you before.

Well, then, it must be his politics. That’s the real problem, right? Wrong.

The real problem is that you, and so many other “compassionate conservatives,” have let your party run away with you. You no longer have the capacity to question conservative politics, even when it is completely at odds with humanity and kindness and everything that is good about mankind, like our ability to empathize with people who are gravely ill and desperate for relief. You take the hard line, even when it is completely inappropriate. Annihilate free speech and condemn the sick - for the good of the Republican Party!

I considered writing this yesterday, but I was too angry. Like a good little writer, I decided to wait a day and cool off. I didn’t want to write in anger and say something un-Christian like, “I can’t wait until that fat bastard goes to hell.” I’m glad I waited. Those 24 hours gave me perspective.

I was in a doctor’s office waiting room this afternoon, trying to keep my restless kids occupied when I heard the most extraordinary line spoken on the TV: “I’ll show that mermaid a thing or two about catching men!” Looking up at the screen, I was astonished to see something that very much resembled what we used to call in my day “a soap opera.”

At first, I thought it must be a spoof, some rerun of a “Saturday Night Live” skit. Could this really be a daytime drama? Turns out that, yes, it was indeed a soap opera called “Passions.” Evidently, this show has been on for several years now. Where have I been?

Obviously not watching soap operas.

I’m fascinated by trends in television; I believe they say a lot about a culture. And at one time, I was a soap opera junkie. In high school, I would rush home from class to catch “General Hospital” every day. It was back in the days of Frisco (pre-Melrose Place Jack Wagner) and Felicia (Kristina Malandro). In college, it was all about “Days of Our Lives” and the Bo and Hope saga. And I wasn’t the only one. My friends and classmates were all addicted too. We talked about our favorite characters’ latest trials and tribulations over lunch. But the storylines back then were all about romance and scandal. Yes, they were over-the-top and extreme, but everything that happened on the show was possible. Not probable, but possible.

Mermaids?

I did a little research and learned that “Passions” has always had fantastical storylines like this one. They’ve had talking dolls and witches too. Evidently, it’s quite successful. And “Passions” isn’t the only one. I’m told “One Life to Live” has featured UFO’s, and a now-defunct soap called “Port Charles” had a vampire. What’s going on?

Well, I have a theory. When all the TV writers threatened to go on strike a few years back, TV producers struck back by creating “reality shows” that didn’t require writing teams. The strategy actually worked, and TV has been filled with “reality” ever since. My theory is that soap operas are taking up the fantasy slack. Since “Survivor,” “American Idol,” and “Project Runway” are so rooted in real people’s quests, TV audiences need a little escapism. With little fantasy to fill our evenings, soap operas are sweeping in to give a little fantasy in the daytime.

Do mermaids, witches and vampires belong in daytime drama? Who am I to say? After all, TV is all about entertainment, right? And I gotta admit, mermaids are sure more entertaining than some of those idiots on “American Idol!”