Brittle

I've never understood snowbirds. Probably because I'm such a creature of habit.  I hyperventilate if I can't get the same parking space...there's no way I'm going to relocate myself twice a year, even without the issues of mother-in-law, five dogs and a job. But I'm beginning to get why people do upend their lives to go down south and then come back up. And I'm not really liking it about myself.

I grew up with winter. And I grew up spending a lot of time outside in it. I love winter.

In theory.

Like a lot of the country, Pittsburgh was enveloped in a cold snap a few weeks back.  It broke and now it's unseasonably warm and slowly, oh so slowly, drying out from the nasty, muddy mess that resulted from snow melting and rain pounding down for days.  But for several days it was in the teens with snow on the ground - the Collie Army's happiest of happy places. And with the exception of about a half hour one Sunday when I dressed like I was about to go on an Arctic expedition and went out to play with the dogs (and a half hour is being generous), I huddled up inside unless I absolutely had to go out in it.

I can make it through winter Steelers games because I've become a master at the football fan layering technique - although I have been known to go to the Pro Shop once or twice to buy more layers - but I feel like the younger son in A Christmas Story, and I am exhausted when I get home because I was literally walking around with ten extra pounds. But the rest of the time when I'm just dressed warmly but not like the Michelin Man I feel so brittle, like you could tap me and I would shatter.

I first noticed I was becoming a Winter Wimp about three years ago I guess. We'd get a cold snap, I'd suddenly develop an aversion to going out, then it would warm and I'd chastise myself for missing out and tell myself next time to man up (if you will), then I wouldn't, and around I'd go.  What happened to me?  Is it mind over matter or is there an actual physical thing that happens to us as we age that makes us less likely to tolerate cold (and don't say we get smarter and know to come in from the cold...LOL).  Well of course I Googled the question and learned it's loss of thermoregulation as we age and our circulation decreases and a few other, non-sexy reasons, so yeah, there is something that happens to us.  But what I didn't find was what to do about it.  Because I don't want to lose the romance of winter. 

Feb 2011 in Glenshaw

I chose the oddest time to voluntarily move to a northern town: mid-January.  Just the way the cookies crumbled really - spending one last holiday as an extended family, cutting off ties with the old position in my company at the year-end, etc. However it was probably stupid for other reasons...mainly a lot of snow that January in Pittsburgh.  I have a lot of stories about trying to get moved in during the dead of winter.  Most funny now that time has passed. Some weren't as amusing at the time.  But I recall the day I first walked into our empty house and first looked outside my kitchen window at the massive oak that stood point blank in the center of the yard as snow fell softly all around it.  That was as close to heaven as I had been in years.  That quiet lovely moment that so reminded me of Montana. And that winter I was out in all that snow a lot: no fence and a dog...multiple walkies no matter the weather.  But it was fine.  The snow insulated us and it was joyous.  That is what I want back.

Of course, climate change is having a huge say in that, but when the rarer opportunities to frolic in the snow with the dogs come, I want to enjoy it, not just miserably tolerate it.

My dad hunted when he was my age. The cold didn't bother him. I'd love to ask him (he did have these awful metal battery operated hand warmer things that I don't know how you actually used your hands with those bricks in your glove), but sadly that opportunity is lost. Honestly the answer I might be chagrined to learn was a little help from Jim Beam, so maybe it's okay he's not my role model for snow days as we age. I don't really need the image of my dad loaded with a loaded rifle haunting me.

So I'm turning to all of you. Particularly all of you living North.  What's the secret to enjoying winter without having to go to Florida or Arizona to do it?