Frozen

I do not like the cold. I distinctly remember (almost impossible for an ADHD person like me so it must have been big) watching the weather from my childhood home in Tulsa Oklahoma. The weather man was going on and on about how the cold and ice would be around for several more days. I asked my mom or dad (can't remember which) "Why does the weather man always stand in front Florida (OK I really said to the far right of the map. I was terrible at geography) when he is doing his report?" My dad said, (the answer sounds like him now that I think about it) "Because if everyone realized how warm and sunny it is year round in Florida, everyone would move there." Even at the tender age of really young I remember thinking "That is where I want to live."

Growing up I hated "car coats (short heavy jackets with a cumbersome hood)", stirrup pants (required if you were wearing boots), rubber boots ( mine were the most disgusting shade of brown ever. My mom bought them 2 sizes too big so the humiliation would last more than one winter), knit hats, and my all time least favorite - idiot mittens. You know the kind; the mittens with a string connecting both mittens so you don't loose one. I had never heard them referred to as idiot mittens until I heard a Bill Cosby comedy album recording (geeze that dates me) entitled "Why is there air?" Cosby describes idiot mittens as the kind where if someone comes up and pulls your left mitten real hard, your forced to sock yourself in the face with the right. Anyway, you have to put the mittens on first to make the whole equation work. Starting with mittens does not work. Without fingers, you can't zip anything, you can't pull on your boots (they are made entirely of plastic and mittens slip on plastic and you can't latch the little loopy, tightening, button thingy with no fingers), pulling a knit hat on with mittens on your hands causes static electricity in your hair (poof, hair clinging to your face and reaching up towards the top of the hat), and of course there is the inevitable problem that the minute you get everything on you then need to pee. I won't go into the details of mittens and uuummm toilet paper issues. Oh my gosh! I just had a flash back to the most horrible and funny childhood memory! This may be TMI for some people. OK, at the home where I grew up we had an electric heater. It was built into the bathroom wall - really! On cold nights my mom would turn the heater on just before I got out of the bathtub. That thing could cook the entire bathroom in about 5 minutes, so timing was imperative. One cold night I jumped out of the tub, ran dripping wet to stand in front of the heater, lost my balance and backed up into it bare butt'ed. It had a metal grill-like front cover. It had been on at least five minutes. I "ended up" with a grill like pattern burned on my back end. I slept on my stomach for two weeks. Ouch, that was miserable. I hated that heater after that. Back to the mittens. Oh forget the mittens, the point is I hate everything related to winter or being cold. Now that I think about it, maybe the third degree burn stripe scares on my ... are at the root of my problem with winter. Ha, winter was literally a pain in the ...

So, fast forward 40 something years. I am triumphantly sitting in my room in Florida. A childhood dream come true. Except I have on three layers of clothes, long sock, house shoes and I am huddled under three blankets because it is 37 degrees with a predicted low of 27 tonight. I'm watching the weather tonight to see where the weather man is standing now!

PS: Don't worry about me. The hot flashes in the middle of the night are like a short vacation to something akin to a Tropical Rain forest with temperatures to rival the Sahara desert. Toasty and wet.