Growing up, I was like any other kid… I loved winter! It meant snow days, snowmen and all the hot chocolate you could stand. I use to love playing in the snow, and thrilled when the first snow would occasionally happen in September. There was a magic in the falling snow that seemed to make everything in the world better, somehow. I loved finding pictures in the ice on the car windows or flying down a good sledding hill. As a child, winter was exhilarating, a new adventure of sorts.
However, I the older I get, the more I despise winter. While the magic and beauty are still something I enjoy, I prefer to enjoy them from the warmth of my home. My perfect winter day would be spend curled up with a good book, a cup of
EXTREMELY hot, hot chocolate and tons of thick blankets. But as perfect as that sounds, that is not reality.
Reality is
cold! This past week the temperature was no where near the freezing point, but hovered between single digits and the teens, with a wind chill below zero. Yet this fact has done little to provide me with the proper excuse to call off work and stay in my warm bed all day.
When the alarm goes off at six, I throw back my covers and immediately regret that decision, longing for the warmth. Thinking that a hot shower would warm and wake me, I make my way towards the bathroom. But because I am the last one to use the shower in the morning, the water is hardly hot enough to awaken and relax my cold muscles.
It only gets better during my drive to work. My commute is about 35 minutes and it takes half the drive to barely warm the car. By the time I arrive at work, I am finally feeling “toasty warm” to an extent. However, it is just in time to venture into the hostile winds and snow that desperately try to steal the scarf protecting my face and neck from the biting cold. The walk into the building takes 5 minutes, just enough time to feel frozen all the way through. The heater at work is scarcely working, yet the air conditioning is on full blast. After a grueling (okay, not really, I work in the library) 8 hour day, I am ready to go home. But you know what that means….battling the winds and snow once more.
For one reason or another, the weather is always worse in the afternoons. The wind is so strong that it pushed me off the sidewalk and stings my eyes as it goes whipping by. Once at the car, I have to spend 10 minutes digging it out from under 6 inches of snow and ice, while continuing to freeze. And once again, it takes half my drive home to warm up. The roads have been awful, most have not been cleared and there is little or no salt on them…in other words, driving is even more cautious. But the effort pays off when I arrive home in one, safe piece… or does it?
Home is no warmer than work… I am freezing right now! My hands are dry and cracked, while my lips are chapped and wind burned. Try as I may, I can’t make my body produce enough heat to keep me semi-warm. There are 5 blankets on my bed and I still shiver half the night. So, after many hours of deep thought, I have decided that I need to move somewhere warm, like the
equator! Anyone want to escape the hateful winter and join me?
