The One Where I Wonder About Winter

I Must Confess I am definitely NOT a winter person. I'm not a summer person either. I'm an in between kind of person. I don't tolerate the cold or the heat. 

I guess I'm Goldilocks when it comes to weather: I want it to be juuust right. The autumn weather was perfect. Gorgeous and sunny through the day, crisp and cool at night without being freezing. 

People always claim that it's 'easy' to warm up in winter, but impossible to cool down in summer. I have never personally found this to be true. My feet and/or hands are permanent blocks of ice during winter. So I'm one of those helpful people who constantly whinges about the weather for at least half the year. You're welcome.

While we're speaking about all things winter, here's another confession: I've never seen snow. 

That's right, I'm 45 and I've never seen snow. It just doesn't snow in Sydney. And I've never been anywhere where it does. I suspect I would not tolerate that sort of weather at all. The idea of being beside a fire with snow falling outside does seem romantic and fanciful, but the reality might be a tad different. There is probably a lot of shoveling involved. I am not good with shovels. Plus you have to put chains on your car tyres or something. It would be TERRIFYING for me to drive in snow.

You'd probably have to invest in thermal underwear. As it is I already wear several layers. I don't need more. When I was young I used to wear a singlet, a spencer (remember those?) and a skivvy with a jumper over the top. I have no idea why I'm telling you that. It was just a random memory. 

I guess there are good things and bad things about all the seasons. Besides, there's not much point complaining about something you can't control anyway. Doesn't seem to stop me, however.

Here's a handy little list I compiled for no other reason but to amuse myself and bore entertain you: 

THINGS I LOVE ABOUT WINTER

• I seem to have become a hat and scarf person. Well, I have dyke short hair at the moment (not that there's anything wrong with that, as the saying goes), so my noggin gets a bit cold. Beanies are my friend.  I look fabulous in them! Or something. Meh, they're warm, anyway. Shut up. 

• It's much easier to exercise when it's not stinking hot and humid and you're already dripping with sweat before you begin. In fact, a bit of movement is necessary to warm up. That can't be a bad thing. Especially considering my next point...

• Comfort eating/food. I always want hot food in Winter. Which can be a good thing if you're an excellent cook. If you're a bit dodgy like me, you end up making a pot of soup that tastes like arse. Consequently you end up eating everything else except the nourishing soup you intended to have. Side note: I know what you're thinking. How do I know what arse tastes like? It's what I imagine arse could taste like. It tasted very, very bad is what I'm getting at. 

• But never mind the terrible arse-tasting soup, because winter is a peak time for birthdays in my family. First Mr 14 becomes Mr 15 next month. CAKE! Then my mum turns 75! MORE CAKE! Then Mickey Blue Eyes turns 53! EVEN MORE CAKE!!! ALL. THE. CAKE!!!! To prevent the afore-mentioned cake from being arse-tasting, it will all be store bought. I think this is a wise move. 

• You HAVE TO drink some wine or scotch in order to warm up. Medicinal purposes only, people. I am forced to do this. I suffer through it like the trouper I am. Shut up. 

THINGS I HATE ABOUT WINTER

• Getting out of bed.
• Cold feet and hands.
• Getting colds, especially the dreaded 'Man Flu'.
• The after effects of all the comfort eating.
• I drink so much tea that I need to pee all the time.
• The only places I can get warm are in bed (and sometimes not even there), in the shower and sometimes in the car in the middle of the day. This makes it frightfully difficult to get anything done.
• It's harder to get all the washing dry. 
• When you run out of  your medicinal wine or scotch and it's too cold and wet to be bothered going out to get some more. 

End of lists. 

We have had some frightfully wet and dismal weather here over the weekend, but in the end I didn't mind because rainy days mean I can curl up with a book. I might be becoming a winter person after all... 

Who knew? 

Linking up for I Must Confess

Are you a winter person? 

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Hot Topic

I don't need to tell you it's hot. You're most likely aware of it from the small detail of your face melting off your skull. Unless you are not in Australia. We are, of course, in our summer months presently.

The heat is often a hot topic (pun intended) for these bogans.  Micky Blue Eyes loves summer. In fact, if he had his way we would probably be heading up to Darwin next Tuesday instead of Queensland. He frequently makes remarks like:

"Wouldn't it be great to be somewhere up in the top end now, in one of the water holes, having a dip!"

I usually look at him as if he is deranged. Clearly he is. He grew up in a family who were not familiar with air conditioning. In fact my out-laws still do not have air conditioning in their home. Therefore, another frequent comment I hear, is "We never had air conditioning, when I was a kid!"

My parents, on the other hand, live in a perpetual state of 'heat horror'. In fact they had to go away to the country for the weekend for my Uncle's 80th birthday celebration. My mother was not impressed at the weather predictions. It was as if my Uncle had an unmitigated gall to have been born in summer, so I'm surprised I was born in January.

We were lucky enough to have had air conditioning from the time I was about five or six. I was constantly reminded how of how lucky I was, by my heat fearing parents.Whenever anybody we knew was foolhardy enough to go away for a family vacation, during the summer holidays, they were immediately dismissed as being completely and totally INSANE. We rarely had summer holidays. As I have always been an indoorsy, bookish person, this never bothered me greatly.

However, since meeting Micky Blue Eyes all that has changed. Now, we will usually go away somewhere during the summer holidays. And that somewhere will always be HOT.  There is not really any escaping it in Summer time, in Australia.  I don't mind going away. In fact, I usually end up enjoying it.

My only aversion to the heat, revolves around the reality of being a 'ranga'. This, of course, means that I have the pallid, almost translucent, freckled skin that goes with it.  Five minutes in the sun and I am decidedly pinkish. Ten minutes equals serious sunburn. After fifteen minutes, I may as well say hellooo Melanoma.   All the 30 plus sunscreen will not prevent me from being burnt somewhat.

Therefore, I really prefer to remain indoors as much as possible. Meanwhile, Micky Blue Eyes will want to hit the beach and go for as many walks as possible. He never likes to actually admit that it's hot. Instead he'll attempt to think of as many inventive excuses as to why he feels hot.

"Maybe it's because I'm not playing soccer/doing enough exercise and sweating it out so that's why I'm sweating now." That is a familiar one.

Or, it's the chair he's sitting on is leather so that is making him sweat not the fact that it's 40 degrees in the shade.  Similar to how most males won't ever ask for directions when lost, Micky Blue Eyes will never admit that is, indeed hot, and the heat is effecting him.

He laments the fact that air conditioning is contributing to global warming and that people have become far too dependent on it. Which I have. Thanks Mum and Dad.

Just to be thoroughly inconsistent though, as much as I abhor the heat, I definitely do not think the cold is any better. No matter how many times people tell me that it is 'easy' to warm up, just chuck on some extra clothes, I have personally never found that theory to be true. My feet remain blocks of ice all through winter despite three pairs of socks and Ugg Boots.  I've even been known to have cold feet as late in the year as November. Now that is just plain wrong.  I must have been a frog in past life or some other cold blooded animal.

So here I will be complaining about the weather for at least half of the year. I whinge when it's hot. I whinge when it's cold.  Right, excuse me while I go back to melting.

How do you survive the heat? Do you love the heat? Prefer the cold? Don't care? Let's discuss the weather! It's fascinating. Isn't it? Oh okay, I'll shut up about it.

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