Freezing Wimps

Do my hands work? OK, good... I wasn't sure they would because I am freezing my orbs off in here!

I have come to understand that south-east Texas weather is... simply Weather-By-Sybil. Yesterday, I was being blown three counties over by winds that bent trees, but it was warm-ish. By the time I cooked dinner, I actually had to kick on the AC for a bit to assuage the feeling of being burnt up in the fires of hell. This morning we woke up to 40 degrees that, with wind-chill feels like 32... the morning-news-weatherman's assessment, not mine.

I find it funny that I consider these temps 'freezing' when I grew up in NJ. I vividly remember winter storms that dumped so much snow that we had to work the front door back and forth to get it open in 40 inches of thick white powder so we could get to the shovel and un-bury ourselves from the house. After 17 years in Nor Cal and another 2+ in Texas, I've become a weather wimp. Visiting NJ in winter now would surely result in my being the new Ice-Woman-Cometh.

I look at my past, and a lot of it seems like 'just-yesterday' so I don't know how I got so weather-pathetic so quickly... then again, it wasn't quickly at all... There are babysitters out there who aren't as old as my residency in California. And yet, my past seems so vivid, so near... I know my age, but I don't remember that I'm that old, ya know? It snuck up on me. Right along with my wimpiness.

My little sister will be 35 in a few months, wasn't she just 7, playing around the corner with her friend when I went to call her in for dinner--which was cooked without any microwaving cause we don't even know what that was yet? Aren't I still living the 'latch-key-kid' life before they came up with the term? Aren't I still riding my Ross ten-speed with the saddle-bag type double baskets on the back down to the 7-11 to get my mom her morning coffee and paper, oh yeah, and her two packs of cigarettes? Or, how about on Friday, I'd be heading off to elementary school with my permission note and two-dollars so that I could go out to lunch across the street from school to the pizzeria with a whole bunch of other permission-note bearing 10 year olds...

My 10 year old daughter's school has such strict rules that I'd have to go in and retrieve her from the Principal's office for a school-time doctor's appointment. Every day when she gets to school and enters the grounds, the bell rings, and she's locked in like a detainee at Guantanamo. After school, my daughter can only play outside if she's right in front of the house and only until the streetlights come on, and only with other kids out there with her unless one of us is out there watching her to make sure she is safe... I used to run and play and ride my bike with all the other neighborhood kids till 9pm on summer nights, and we could be absolutely anywhere in the neighborhood--two, three blocks over... parents only calling for you when the little commercial would come up on prime-time TV that said, "It's 8:23... do you know where your children are?" then you'd show your face and bargain for 20 minutes more...

My son gets strapped into his car-seat with more safety-restraints than a NASCAR driver. I'm not even sure if the Buick my mom used to own had seat belts in the back seat. I do know that if it did, using them was not something that got harped on. We'd get told once, and if we got into an accident, and weren't wearing the seat belt, causing us to go flying around the interior like a pinball then it was on us for not putting on the seat belt when we got told about it, and we could wait till we got home to get checked out fully, because we could answer the basic question, "Are you alive back there?"

Maybe we've all turned into a society of wimps, and not just about the weather...Oh I'm sorry, did someone take offense at being called a wimp? Was that not politically-correct of me...? Oh... I hurt your feelings? Really? Uh-Huh.

I'll cry about it next year if I find time. Until then grow some backbone, ya weenie!
*And I'll wear a warmer jacket, cause my whining is pissing me off...