Monday, December 22, 2008

Oh, the humanity!

I live in Florida. With palm trees swaying in the balmy breeze. Tangerines by the dozens growing riper every minute. Aaaah, in my own backyard! The smell of the salt air, the seagulls and pelicans chattering as they soar above the sandy beaches.

Yeah, whatever. Who the f**k am I kidding? It was 48 degrees today!

I know, I know. Millions of Americans are caught in a deathgrip of blizzard-like conditions this week. Like I give a crap. I'm cold, too.

I've paid my dues to the Society of Frozen Tundra People. I spent nearly seven years in Upper Michigan. There have been times when my father had me shovel a path to the front door from my second story bedroom window because it was the only way out of the house. The schools didn't shut down because of a snowstorm unless the windchill went below -30 degrees. Yes, you read that correctly: minus 30 degrees. That was only because the school superintendent didn't want to be responsible for some poor 6th grader freezing his arse off while waiting for a school bus that plowed itself into a 6-foot high bank of snow and therefore never showed up.

I have been trapped inside a snowfort that caved in on itself. I have gone swimming in Lake Superior when it finally thawed and I had to avoid stepping in still-melting snow slush. I have pranced around in my cheerleading skirt and short-sleeve sweater during basketball season (Go Gwinn Modeltowners!).

I never wussed out. NEVER.

Until now.

But I live in Florida. This kind of weather, it's wrong. So wrong. And it's not that I don't feel for those of you who are without electricity. I do. And it's not that I don't want families and friends to be reunited for the holidays via planes, trains, and automobiles. Because I do. It's almost like asking my family in Wisconsin to just deal with 105 degree temperatures on the heat index. You know what they'd say to that? Hell no!

I'm cold. Plain and simple. I wear socks to bed. I crank up my heating pad to TURBO BROIL and place it under my blankets (because I'm too cheap to buy an electric blanket). I check the weather forecasts daily to make sure the temperatures are rising instead of falling. I beg my family to turn up the heat to 80 degrees because, to my skinny, little self, that is a comfortable room temperature. Florida has turned me into a sissy. Even wind has an affect on me after many a harrowing night asleep on the couch with my daughter listening to trees crash to the ground and feeling the walls "breathe" during an onslaught of hurricane force gusts.

Florida is not equipped to handle temperatures below 70 degrees. Florida is a land of heat-induced deaths, alligator-eats-toy-poodle incidents, hurricanes named after Nickelodeon characters and foreigners, one-armed golfers (refer to alligator), sinkholes the size of Delaware, critical drought conditions brought on by overpopulation and too many golf courses, Old Sparky (ret.), a declining English-speaking population, and the Backstreet Boys. Haven't we suffered enough?

2 comments:

Remo said...

The last time I was in Florida, they should have posted a sign at the border that read "Welcome to Florida- Please turn your clocks back 50 years."

You go, Joe Dirt!

Sra said...

I live in Utah, where it does get pretty miserably cold in the Winter, although not as bad as more northern and eastern states. But I'm going to have to agree with you that weather is relative, and 48 degrees is an outrage for Florida. If it got below zero or above 110 in Utah, that would be an outrage too!