Baby, it's Cold Outside

I didn't really know that song until I watched the movie Elf for the first time. That's my favorite scene in the movie. My second favorite is where Buddy says, "There are four major food groups. Candy, candy canes, candy corn, and syrup!" as he's putting syrup on his spaghetti noodles instead of sauce. It kind of makes me shudder in sugar horror even thinking about it; I don' t know why I like it, but I do. I would never do such a thing, and the rest of the movie is pretty lame, as far as I'm concerned, but I do like those two parts.


This week it was record cold. It snowed and sent the city into shutdown mode. When I woke up on Wednesday the thermometer read 19, feels like 10. Brrr. I was a little ice box all week. My little feet were frozen at work. I wore a scarf, hat, gloves, and big winter coat, not to mention boots with fairly good tread as I made the trek to work. There was no way anybody without those little tire tread makers hooked on their tires was going anywhere.

The nice thing about snow is that when you're a little kid and you don't have to worry about going anywhere, it's actually romantic. Little individual ice crystals falling from the sky that you can go play in, make snowballs with, go sledding on, and do snow angels in - what could be better? Especially when you can just go inside and have hot cocoa when you're done with five little marshmallows on it (ten if mom's feeling generous).

Apparently my neighbors are small children inside, because a snow day was announced, and since there was 2" of snow on the street, they got their sleds and snowboots on and slid down the street again and again, shrieking gleefully at the tops of their lungs until almost midnight. I thought it was kind of cute and a nice background noise until I started imagining what would happen if someone in a Range Rover decided to come down the street going too fast, and the possible ramifications and lawsuits, and then I kind of tried to block out the sound. Oh, how quickly I have become a negator!*

For a few days everything was minimally staffed - hardly anyone was at work - and staying warm and traveling safely were all anybody thought about. It made me think, hm. If I were still down south, I wouldn't have thought about weird weather in the north at all. Weather's one of those things where unless you're in it you just don't care/understand. "Oh, poor you, you're having a snowstorm. Guess what? It's 55 and sunny today!" If you're not in the place with the weather, it doesn't affect you at all. But if you are in the place with the weather, and it's bad weather, it consumes you. I never even looked at weather.com before....not since I moved. But you can bet that every few hours I'd refresh the page to see what it looked like.

It was cold outside. It's warmer now - and for a few weeks, people will be careful, and try to keep a few emergency items on hand. But after a few weeks, it may snow again, and we will replay the situation over and over again. It's like a broken record: snow. panic. cleanup. remember. forget. snow. panic. cleanup. remember. forget. All the way until spring, and then the "forget" becomes the rut until next winter.

Yes, I did just compare weather to a record. Hopefully anyone who reads this knows what a record is. Oh help for those who don't. If you haven't, you're missing out. But you can miss out less...you can experience the cold just by putting on "Baby, it's Cold Outside."

Negator: Professional wet blanket.