November 23, 2008. Chevy Chase, Md. Cold Weather.

It always comes on so quickly and catches you unawares. The human of the species is not able to accommodate to cold weather. In the Tropics a person takes only a few days to get used to hot weather, but we never get used to the cold. At 77 degrees, a human with no clothes can function very well, but when the weather is cold, we must use all out tricks to keep us warm and comfortable. Those tricks come back to me as the cold arrives and I am feeling very cold. I go through all my routines. This past week has been brutally cold so I brought out all my old routines. Now if you are a Canadian, all these routines are known to you as the weather is only 77 degrees a bit of the time, so in order to be comfortable both inside and outside, you develop a lot of patterns to keep warm. I always thought that everyone knew how to keep warm, until I saw my wonderful daughter-in-law feel cold all the time up in Nova Scotia. I had to give her a short course in survival tactics to keep warm. I taught her to wear socks and to tuck her shirt into her jeans. Wear a fleece jacket over her shirt that covers her bottom, and wear a hat. Now this looks ridiculous in August but it kept her warm.

This weekend at the farm I had to use all my tricks to keep warm. The temperature at night was 10 degrees and went up to 24 during the day. I did fine, because I remembered . I wear knee socks that are actually ski socks so are warm. I wear hiking boots. I wear long underwear tops under a long sleeved shirt, and I wear a light jacket in the house at all times. I use flannel sheets on the bed, as I do at the apartment. Last week at work I wore ankle length boots with both long pants and skirts. I wear gloves always out of doors, and always a scarf with my coat or jacket. But the best part is that after the day is done, we get into the hot tub, where the warmth gets right through to your bones, or at least it seems it is. My southern friends do not like hot tubs, at least not as much as we do, and that is because, as I child, they were always hot, while we were always cold. The interesting thing is that you forget from one year to the next, but just this week it all came back to me, and all my tricks worked to keep me warm and cosy. But the older I get, the less I like the cold weather. I better get used to it because winter is just beginning.