60 Degrees ( Okay, 70) and Freezing

Somewhere along the CA coast

I am pretty sure I am a wimp. I spent 21+ years living in an environment where it was pretty much hardcore winter for 6 months out of the year, where you'd often wake up in the morning hoping the streets have been cleared and that your car starts. Where, if the temperature happened to hit forty degrees, everyone was out in shorts and long sleeves.

I'd like to say it's taken me three years to acclimate to the almost always pleasant weather of Southern California, but I'd be lying. I think it took about 6 months. By the time I went back home for that first Christmas, my body had somehow forgotten what it was like to need to regulate its temperature. In all actuality, my body rebelled. I was so cold the entire 2 weeks I was there. Even riding in the car provided a place for me to chatter my teeth, despite the fact I was wearing a heavy winter coat.

This is why I am nervous. I am soon going to be spending the next few months in what I affectionately call the Tundra. I am going home for a little bit and I don't think I could have picked a better time of year: the dead of winter. I think I may die. Slowly, for sure, since that's how you freeze to death. Everyone keeps telling me that I'm being dramatic or exaggerating, but I tell you I am not. I don't care how many layers I put on, how consistently I wear long johns when I leave the house, it is nearly impossible for me to stay warm for very long. And here's the "kicker," as my mom would say: You start sweating to death the minute you walk indoors. You can't win!!

Here's an example of how wimpy I've become. I am sitting at home now with my space heater on, under a pile of covers...and according to my desktop weather alert it is 62 degrees outside. When I tell this to my family members, they all act like it is a warm spring day. Um, no. Brrr.

I will endure. Mostly because I don't have a choice.

Good thing snow is pretty. That is, until you are outside for 2 hours shoveling the driveway and then have to go out a few hours after that to do it all over again.

Here's a pic from last year when I enacted a little child labor--she had a blast, though!! (She's at the bottom of the driveway and the street is behind her--clearly the plows hadn't come through yet...)
P.S. I just checked the weather for my hometown...it's lightly snowing and the windchill is 12. Awesome.