absurd lessons

Upon walking into work from the car today I had a thought… If you choose to wear linen pants on a single digit day, you might as well go nakey – it would feel about the same.

This made me think… What other preposterous lessons have I had to learn while living out here in the middle (er, kind of at the top) of this silly place called Illinois. I will share… cuz I’m nice like that.

Gloves are necessary. Trust me on this one. They’re not just something to keep your hands a little warm. They are actually needed to keep you from crying in pain.

Wearing high heeled boots while walking through a parking lot after it just rained and then froze into ice and then snowed… makes you walk comically and awkward as to not fall. I watched a woman walk into the building yesterday morning who had on boots, and I thought to myself, wow I looked that stupid walking into the building just the day before, hmm, note to self… don’t do that anymore. However, should you still decide to try this one, I suggest knee pads and a helmet.

Which brings me to; flats are no better than high heels/boots. They have no traction and the sole of the shoe is so thin that you might as well walk barefoot (but don’t do that, that would be ridiculous). Also, snow creeps in very easily.

There aren't any cute snow boots that actually keep you warm AND keep your feet dry. Just suck it up and buy the industrial navy blue and tan horrors that actually do work wonders.

A car with an automatic start does NOT defrost your car...it just starts the car but will not defrost windows (even if you leave the setting on window defrost).

The statement "Yay, at least all the snow is melted off my car" (which is usually said after a 1 ½ hour commute home) is usually followed the next morning with "Damn, my car is full of ice!"

When cleaning snow off of your car, don’t forget to de-ice your mirrors. I cleaned off my entire car and didn't realize that the mirrors were still full of ice rendering them totally unusable. Stopping to clean them would be silly so it was a sort of Russian Roulette the entire drive home. Also, if you have to use the word de-ice in a sentence, it might be time to move back home to California.

People won’t always give you a ride from the building to your car if they aren’t leaving at the same time as you… even when you say umm, hello, it’s cold outside. Weird. Did I mention it’s cold outside and I don’t want to walk? But to give some people their props (yeah I said props, so?)… when asked for this ride, some people comply. And some even clean the snow off of your car FOR you… awesome.

If you want a pet - buy a cat. Dogs require walks outside and, in snow and this is not acceptable. Unless you want an antsy, fat dog that poops all over your house because it’s too damn cold to walk him...get a cat. (Note: unless you also have children, in which case you can send them to walk the dog and then you don’t actually have to get cold.)

If you talk shit to Mother Nature on a blog and say no single digit weather please, she might think she is funny when she complies and makes it double digit… only negative.

And there you have it … cold weather lessons. If you live here, get out while you can. If you don’t; don’t be stupid, snow is for visiting, seeing, saying aww so pretty and then driving home at the end of the day – not living in. Sheesh