Oh Winter...Always Coming When You're Not Wanted...

It seems like only yesterday when my friend Kayla and I partook in this little gem of a conversation on our trek back to the dorms after work:

Me: I hate the winter!

Kayla: Me too! It's always getting in my bra!

Me:...the winter gets in your bra?

While this actually took place roughly two years ago, my feelings toward the winter have not changed one iota. I still hate it. In fact, I loathe it. 

The snow. The ice. The subzero temperatures that require bundling up and waddling around like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. The sickness that goes hand-in-hand with this time of year. Ugh. Somehow even with the bundling up, the harsh wind always seems to find some little crack in the armor in which to sneak in and make life miserable for me on my walk to the car/Starbucks/wherever. For Kayla this is apparently her bra. For me, the winter seems to find the small of my back. I'm (usually) wearing a coat! How does this happen? How does it sneak in to wreak havoc?

And then there is the driving. Driving in the snow and I do not have a warm reputation (and you can ask just about any of the poor souls who have ridden with me between the months of December and March). All that scraping and de-frosting before even leaving the parking lot, followed by skidding all over the road at every sign of ice. Oy.

And then, as a perfectionist, there is the most troubling of all--what happens when someone walks through all that pristine, sparkly snow. Its the equivalent of spilling hot chocolate down an all-white ensemble for me. What once could have been beautiful is now ruined and an eyesore. An eyesore that refuses to melt for months, forcing me to walk around surveying dirty slush and salty streets. 

I would say a significant amount of my time between the months of December and March is spent complaining that I'm cold. As someone who does not enjoy wearing layer upon layer of clothing (what's sexy about that?), this concept of wearing heavy sweaters and bundling up is pretty much lost on me. Self-inflicted? Perhaps. But then I've never claimed to dress by being dictated by the weather.

Maybe I should take a cue from most of the birds and migrate somewhere warmer for the winter from now on. Somewhere where I can lounge about half-naked and sip tropical drinks at two in the afternoon. Who's with me? 

--JW