Winter Sport

Southerners who move north tend to go one of two ways: either they embrace all things snow and cold because they've never had it before, or they loathe all things snow and cold because they've never had to deal with it before.

I follow the latter path.

That's not to say that I haven't gotten used to the winter weather here. When my Papa calls from Arkansas and gripes about how cold it is there when it's only in the 40s, I roll my eyes across the phone lines. When my in-laws visit from California in January and pull on their coats and scarves and mittens and hats just to go out to the car, where it's going to get warm in, like, ten minutes, I just sigh and grab a hoodie and off we go.

But that doesn't mean that I LOVE the weather. I just have a high pain threshold. When some local mom friend invited me and the girls to go over to her house and play some family version of football outside in the snow after dark, I was all, "Ummmm.... no." I have no patience for snowman-building, so if the girls want something taller than they can do, they have to make Matt do it. I'll take them to the park and spend all day there with the sledding and the nature walks and the futzing about with the damn snow, but it's more like torture as my thighs go numb and I realize that I didn't wear the right warm boots, etc.

Therefore, the upcoming winter must be handled more like problem-solving.

• I will splurge on fancy wool long-johns.
• I will sew pocket handwarmers.
• I will knit scarves.
• I will always know where my hat and mittens are.
• I will focus on the (few) things that I love about winter, such as my babies on ice:

• I will even suck it up a few times and get on the ice myself. 

I swear, though, that if I fall and break my tailbone (AGAIN!), that you and I are through, Winter!