If you northerners who are reading this want to feel better about your own crappy weather this month, know this: Our heater came on last night. I wore gloves to walk the dog this morning. I wore shoes that covered my entire feet to do something other than exercise for the first time since moving down here in June.
We’re cold in south Florida, too. Not as cold as my Ohio friends and family, who have been reduced to posting brief Facebook status updates “ - - - is freezing,” “ - - - is cold” and “ - - - is freezing cold.”
Down here, you know it’s cold when the old people are no longer clogging up Walgreens parking lot. They’re all at home in their condos, hovering around the clothes dryer, ruing the day that they decided to come down to Florida right after Christmas.
It’s cold enough at night that when you get between the sheets, it feels like someone wet the bed. Hours ago.
If you’re my husband’s family, you know it’s cold down here when you stop getting taunting emails from him, with weather updates, beach photos attached, and comments like, “Sorry about your bad luck.”
It’s cold enough that I’m tempted to get out my cape. It’s not really a necessity, but I hate to miss an opportunity to mess with my son, who thought he had laid to rest the risk of being seen with his mom wearing a super hero accessory when we moved to a sub-tropical climate.
I bought my cape in Ireland and it’s a thing of beauty. It’s part wool, part cashmere, part cotton balls, part champagne. I paid too much for it and didn’t fill out the form correctly to get a tourist tax exemption (throwing up your hands and writing in all caps I’M AN AMERICAN doesn’t get you much in with the Irish), so I really paid too much for it. My husband talked me into buying it, giving me the speech about how I deserve nice things. He even gave me his share of the souvenir money to spend on it.
So I went ahead and bought it. I wore it three or four times - once to the Thriller parade in Lexington: A brisk October night . . . I had a Starbucks pumpkin spice latte . . . humming Michael Jackson . . . grooving with the zombies . . . my cape was the icing on the cake that made me look like I was in a commercial for a Midwest autumn vacation.
I wore my cape to the races at Keeneland and then again on Christmas Eve, where my son looked at me and deadpanned, “Are you riding with us or are you flying?”
Ha, ha, very funny. Last night he ate an entire box of blueberries I was saving for a salad. I’m thinking of getting out my cape and walking into the school during his lunch period.Labels: cape, cold weather, Ireland, south florida, thriller
