The cold weather – yes I am a wimp, BY CHOICE!

I do not like the cold weather, not at all. If the temperature dips below 50 degrees, I am cold and do not like it. I gripe about the cold, when it gets cold – a lot. We have had some unprecedented cold this year here in northeast Florida. I have been here 20 years and do not ever remember this amount of cold. We get a few days that we dip below 32, for a few hours and we cover the plants and move on. NOT this year. We are getting hard freeze warnings and it has been cold (below 32) at night for over a week. It does not get much better during the day, rarely making it over 45-50. I hate the cold. Thank God the forecast has us getting back up to 68 during the day and only 48 at night by the end of the week and I could not be happier.

I have learned that I really hate the folks from the north with their condescending attitude about my hatred of the cold. I have heard all manner of criticism about it. Comments like, Oh you don’t know cold, in 89 during the blizzard in Buffalo it got cold and you should quit whining it only got up to 9 degrees today are BS. Well I am here to tell you something, I grew up in Ohio and lived in Chicago during the winter of 83-84 and I lived in Maine for the winters of 90 and 91. I know what cold is! When I was in Chicago, with the wind chill factor, it was 89 degrees below zero. -89 is cold and I bet there aren’t many of you that have endured that level of cold, pansy my ass. When I lived in Maine where it routinely got so damn cold the snot on the inside of my nose froze, yeah how damn crazy is that. So for you dunderheads who say that I do not know what cold is I say to you, kiss my ass! I know what cold is!

Through all of that cold I learned something, before the cold froze and killed the parts of my brain closest to the outside out my head. In the frontal Lobe, where reasoning, planning, parts of speech, movement, emotions, and problem solving take place and some research indicates the outer layers closest to the skull are the most critical. The Parietal Lobe on the other hand controls movement, orientation, recognition, perception of stimuli. Humm………. Perception of stimuli, say for example the ability to recognize cold assed weather is severely limited, severely limited - by the very cold in question. Of course, the Occipital Lobe is not lost in this mix either, in case you were wondering. It is normally associated with visual processing, for example someone seeing and then in turn thinking that 10 feet of freaking snow is beautiful, beautiful my ass. That part of the brain was clearly damaged by the cold weather. In conversations about brain function we can not forget about the Temporal Lobe, this is where perception and recognition of auditory stimuli, memory, and speech are handled. For example, the inability to remember that cold weather SUCKS and the cold weather can kill you.

I have not even been talking about the snow, freezing rain, sleet and all other manner of nastiness that comes out the sky when it is cold. It ruins shoes and clothes with ease. It makes life itself a challenge when driving. Oh yeah I hear the stories, I have been driving on it for years. Well let me tell you, NO ONE can drive safely on snow covered roads, you are cheating death every time you do it. And if there is ice on the road, black ice or whatever – NO ONE can drive on that. I am not trying to pass judgment on anyone’s driving skills I am merely stating the obvious. No car will hold traction on the ice, simple physics dictate that, not driver skill sets. Then you have to put the salt and sand all over everything in an attempt to make it somewhat safe. Actually you are being lulled into a false sense of security and due to the problems with brain freezing, you are not even aware of the actual danger. Aside from that, the salt eats away at the second biggest investment most folks make, your automobile. The miserableness is not limited to just that, it can also ruin your house. Gutters filled with frozen water, backing up under the shingles and behind the fascia – ruining all manner of things. The salt thrown down erodes the sidewalk and driveways.

I have chosen to live in Florida because, before my brain was damaged, I figured out, I do not like the cold. I do not like the cold and I do not like the cold. That does not make me a wimp, pansy or any other name tossed at me recently, it is my choice. My choice because I do not like to be cold. I do not like to deal with any of the misery that comes with the shitty weather, that is my choice. You can fool yourselves all you want but when you have to get out and shovel the three feet of snow from your car in the darkness of morning in sub zero temperatures – it sucks. And you know what, it is OK to hate that - it is a terrible thing to have to do. If you can not admit that it sucks we are back to talking about the frozen brain. So for me, less than 50 degrees is cold, and I hate it.

The comparisons with the heat we have to deal with does not hold water when scrutinized either. So when it gets to 100 here we stay inside in the air conditioning. JUST like when it is below zero, you crank up the heat and do not go outside unless you have to. We have the heat index, ya’ll have the wind chill. We have hurricanes, we get a warning and ya’ll have tornado’s which do not come with much warning. It is a tit for tat game, all the way to getting to the unavoidable fact that we DO NOT have to shovel the heat. I live in Florida because I like it here and do not like the cold.

Stay warm my friends.