November

This morning I accidentally wrote the date as 3/29, and gee, for a moment I basked in the fantasy…if only...if only I could blink and leap ahead past the harsh winter months.

(Okay, you people in the Midwest—so what if it was 48 degrees? It’s not polite to laugh at southern Californians.)

I know daytime highs in the 60’s aren’t mind-numbingly cold. I know nighttime lows in the mid-40's don’t leave icicles hanging off the eaves. And yes, I fully realize Mother Nature could add the quintuple whammy of wind, rain, sleet, hail, and/or snow to make my life really miserable.

I should be thankful for sunshine and cloudless blue skies.

Still…

When November pokes its ugly head around the corner, I wanna make like a bear and hibernate.

The misery starts before I even get out of bed. I can’t leave the heat on overnight or I’ll roast, and the timer thingy doesn’t seem to work. Bottom line: my bedroom’s an igloo. Oh, wait. Bad analogy--igloos are toasty, right? Anyway, sure I could get up and turn on the heat—but then I get fooled into thinking it’s warm outside and end up wearing a summer dress in the middle of December.

Which I do on an alarmingly frequent basis.

I mean, I can’t cover a purple tea-length dress with a red leather jacket that stops mid-thigh, can I? (The answer is, no I cannot. I must wear a full-length coat of say, camel, saving the red leather jacket for the black mini-skirt…which translates, at least for me, into a need to buy tons of outerwear to go with the innerwear.)

Please don’t mention the word layers because the concept is over my head. In fact, if you ask me, layers came out of a super-secret meeting of department store conglomerates way back in the sixties. What am I supposed to do? Wear a tank beneath the blouse that’s beneath the sweater that’s beneath the coat? How do I mix and match the colors and lengths? (I tell you. It’s a corporate conspiracy.)

Don’t get me started on evening clothes during the winter. Well, okay. Go ahead. Get me started. See, I’m going to Vegas for New Years. I’m thinking, hmmm…New Years…Vegas…it’d be a sin not to wear something strappy and sexy in Sin City, right? But I also don’t wanna freeze my (fill-in-the-blank)s off. Nor do I wanna lug around a heavy coat that I’ll have to check every time we switch casinos.

(Ugh. Did I mention I hate Winter??????)

And, no matter what I do or how hard I try…wherever I go, between now and March, if you see a girl shivering like a puppy left out in the storm, say hi. It’s me.