Yes! Winter is Too &%$* Cold

^{by A. Gagliardi}

OK. I’ve had just about enough of winter. Actually, winter is all right, and would be wonderful if it were about 50 degrees warmer. It’s just that I hate being cold all the time. It is making me SO grouchy. I’ve been cold since late October and I’ve had just about all I can stand. Even sitting is no fun. It’s cold where ever I go, here in the Twin Cities.

I took a trip to St. Cloud – it’s cold there. I went to Hugo. Yup, cold there too. It’s cold outside; and it’s cold inside in many places. I just feel like wearing my coat all day long. And if it isn’t cold inside, it’s just so hot you need to strip down to your bikini. Then you have to spend a half hour redressing just to go back outside – which you must do to get home.

It’s just harder to live in the cold weather. You have to wear two pair of socks. It’s a fight to get jeans on over thick tights or winter gahtahs (long underwear ). There is the undershirt, the turtleneck, the sweater and possibly the vest over that. Then, if you want to go outside you still need to put on a coat, hat, scarf, mittens, and boots.

You absolutely must wear gloves or mittens because car steering wheels are so very cold. And the garage door doesn’t want to go up. It usually takes mine about four tries to make it halfway. Sometimes I have to go to my car, take out the door opener, go stand by the garage door and push the button. When the door goes up about four inches (where it usually stops) I need to help it along with a slight pull - - but not too hard a pull or it will go off the track.

Then you have to squeeze your child into the carseat that now is too small because you’ve put about ten extra pounds of clothing on them. And you are mentally begging them not to have to go to the bathroom because that will put you about an hour behind schedule. When you do get all their coats on, they can hardly walk. I noticed that children are a lot heavier and harder to carry all bundled up.

The car is usually cold until about one block before my destination. The windows steam up if I don’t have the blower on high, so I am in a frigid gale as I drive down the street. I might just as well have the windows open. And don’t even get me started on the state of our streets with the shalom of ice moguls on every side street, black ice on the thorough fares, and pot holes popping up as the pavement freezes and cracks.

Everything takes longer in winter. It takes longer to get any place. In the summer you say “Good-bye.” Your grab your bag and out the door you go. In winter you say, Good-bye. Then you put on your extra pair of socks, the boots, your coat that you button or zip up; find your hat and gloves, put on those items and grab your scarf for around your neck.

Then you say, “Goodbye” again. Now you don’t have your car keys in hand, so you have to take off your gloves to rummage around in your purse and pockets. There is simply no way you can get your glove inside your coat or pants pocket and back out again. You finally retrieve the car keys from wherever they were. Now, you say good-bye again, keys in gloved hand, bag over your shoulder, hat, scarf and boots all in place. Chances are the door will be stuck and you will have to take off your gloves again to help jimmy the door open before you can get out in to the frozen wonderland that is Minnesota.

Taking the bus is not picnic either. You have to stand on the corner (it’s always the windier side of the street) for God only knows how long. Yes I do have a bus schedule and you’d think the bus company would have the same schedule. But Nooooooo! Then, when you finally get on the bus, you have to take your gloves off to find the right amount of change or your bus card. You know you always drop it if you carry the bus card around in your gloves, so you keep it in a good spot – one only your bare hand will be able to get to.

I was at the Winter Carnival Torchlight Parade Saturday night, in downtown St. Paul. I was thinking of pulling my hood over my hat to get a bit warmer, but the hood was already up. I had forgotten my scarf and criticized myself for being so thoughtless.

Some man who was standing next to me said "What's the matter with us Minnesotans? We are nuts to be standing out here in this cold, freezing our ____ es off!”

“But, we Minnesotans are so hearty! It can’t possibly be as cold as we feel it is. Anyway, isn’t this fun?” I responded back to him and we both laughed at our foolishness. What IS the matter with us?

As I sit at my computer, my legs get so cold I have to take breaks to run-up-and-down-the-stairs in order to get my blood circulating again. I literally sit shivering in my chair. My cup of hot coffee chills to a frosty mug in a matter of minutes.

When we sit at the kitchen breakfast booth – even through the walls are insulated, the cold insinuates itself onto the seat and under our shirts. It gathers ice crystals down our backs. I hate that. I hate having to find a blanket to sit on, so I won’t freeze while I eat my meals.

If I get up from my warm bed during the night, I get cold just going outside the covers. The nighttime always seems more cold than the daytime. I equate light with warmth and dark with cold, so there you go.

I cannot find a toilet seat that is not sub zero in my house. I have three bathrooms, two have wooden seats and one is plastic. But they all feel like metal, I tell you. Frozen metal! And when my butt touches that frozen metal it is instantly frozen, too. Then as I sit there, my butt warms the toilet seat just enough to create a little moisture and viola! Picture the tongue on the metal pipe scene that is so familiar to us all and apply that thought to my thighs on the toilet seat.

Any water that I manage to coax out of my shivering body, instantly forms tiny ice cubes as it hits the toilet water. Yes, my once-warm-but-never-again-butt clings to that frozen toilet seat as I try to leave it. So, now you know how painful it can be, to be cold, in the dark bathroom during the night.

My husband, bless his soul, is an energy conscious man. We are saving the environment and our budget by keeping the house at 65 degrees – OK, so some days it is actually 63 or 64 degrees, and other days it creeps dangerously close to 67 or 68. That said; we do have lots of sweaters and blankets to wrap ourselves in as we go about our hobbies, housework, or homework.

Then my children come over with the grand kids and want to go outside for some winter fun. “What is the matter with them?” I wonder. It’s just too, too cold to go out.

The sun is shining. The kids are having fun building a snow fort, then a snowman in the back yard. I can hear them shouting and laughing. Oh, Oh. They need some help out there. They don’t know how to make a snow person. They’ve got it all wrong. He needs a carrot nose and scarf or he’ll just freeze up, for heaven’s sake. I’ll just grab my coat and bring these things out. Now, where did I put my mittens?

Winter cold? Oh, never mind.