Where do I live ? Not Alaska! Not the North Pole! Not the Arctic! I live in FLORIDA ! I live in Florida with a man who was born and raised in Northern, (very, very northern), Michigan. For many years of his life he was stationed on Army bases in the mountains of Germany and in Alaska so The Man knows about C O L D weather.
This past October the weather in Michigan started to cool down into the 50's and The Man had the car packed and ready to roll South because he was "Freezing!"
It is now December first in Florida and the weather has been exceptionally warm for this time of the year. The humidity has remained a little longer than normal and the temperatures have been in the high 70's to mid 80's. It has been a little too uncomfortably warm and humid to sit outside for any length of time and that has been a disappointment. There is nothing I love more than getting up in the morning, taking my coffee out on to the lanai and sitting in the sun reading the paper. (The newspaper is a whole other issue. It has been an uphill battle to get our paper delivered on a DAILY basis.)
After spending so much time outside while we were in Michigan this summer it is a huge disappointment to be "stuck" inside because it is still too hot and humid go out. Small price to pay for living down here but it is unusual for this time of the year.
Fast forward to the past week and the voices of doom and gloom on the local news. I'm not talking about MY president and his constant abuse by the media but rather I am talking about the idiots on the TV who must sensationalize EVERYTHING !!!!! You know how I feel about the whole hurricane nonsense and panic caused by the news but now that hurricane season is over I thought we were free and clear from crying wolf about the weather.
NOT !!!! An entire week ago the local news started panicking about THE COLD FRONT heading for Florida. They report this "news worthy" information using the same voices and levels of panic that they use when the "killer hurricane" is headed our way. (We were not even close to getting hit by a hurricane this past summer but according to the news media we were living on the edge of imminent doom every second of the entire season.). So when the deadly cold front started oozing its way down from Canada the news was ready for a weeks worth of constant reporting.
And here's the funny part . . . The Man got sucked right in ! I have lived here long enough to know that a "deadly cold front" is nothing to even blink at. First of all it will never get any colder than a warm day in Michigan. Secondly, it will be here for less than the time it takes to find a pair of gloves in your closet, if you even own a pair of gloves. Cold fronts like to come down here every so often to warm themselves up and then the return just a quickly as the snow birds in January. I personally LOVE when we have cool air headed our way. It gives me an opportunity to dig through my closet to find and wear jeans for one day. (If I can still fit into them since I haven't had them on in a year and we all know a LOT can happen in a year!) I also keep in mind the fact that there is a good possibility that the temperatures will not get any cooler because the front decides to take a sharp left turn and head to the Carolinas instead of Florida. Often the front isn't strong enough to ooze this far south and gets hung up around Disney world where it rides Space Mountain for a day or so before retreating back North. So Cold Fronts are not a priority on my radar.
The Man took an entirely different approach . . . I think that after talking with his son in Alaska last week where the temperatures were topping out at TWENTY SEVEN DEGREES BELOW ZERO, (and it was only November!) might have gotten The Man thinking about just how cold it can be. Totally forgetting where he is himself right now he began a week long preparation for THE COLD FRONT.
You would think we were preparing for months of lockdown in the frozen tundra of Siberia. We had to go to the store and get cans of soup because soup is good when it gets cold. My pantry contains at least twelve cans of soup purchased over the past four years every time a cold front is headed toward Florida. We never eat the soup, we just stock up in case we get snowed in. When we were planning our Thanksgiving dinner one of us was planning on all the hot turkey dishes we could prepare on those days when it "got cold". Turkey soup and turkey pot pie were tops on the list, along with hot turkey sandwiches. I was thinking turkey salad and cold turkey sandwiches but I was out voted.
And so we were READY !! While I was in the hospital the phone conversations revolved around our preparations for the cold weather that was coming and what would I do if I was delayed in the hospital with only my bathings suit top and shorts to wear home. I would FREEZE to death before I made it to the car ! (Luckily I got home well before the apocalypse ! )
All day yesterday "OUR" focus was on todays weather, what will "we" wear when we get up, what should we have for dinner that is a good cold weather meal, do we have a supply of hot chocolate? I kept walking around opening doors hoping it was cooling off so I could shut off the AC and let some fresh air in but it was still too warm to do that. The Man continued his constant commentary on how cold it was going to get tonight so when we went to bed I shut down the AC, opened some windows and crawled under the covers. The Man SAID it was going to get cold !
At 1:00AM I woke up sweating to death !! Holy crap !! I had kicked off all the covers because the room was about three hundred degrees. You know I got up muttering to myself and continued to mutter for the next four hours that I couldn't get back to sleep. It was at that point that I opened up ALL the sliding doors to let the cool early morning air come in. It felt WONDERFUL ! I finally returned to bed at five this morning, crawled under the covers and went back to sleep enjoying some nice cool air.
When the man got up this morning he is wearing a long sleeve thermal top and SHORTS ! The house is super comfortable with the AC off because the doors are still open letting in the dreaded COLD FRONT. I checked my weather app and it is now 59 degrees and feeling awesome. The sun is shining brilliantly and I am about to go outside to enjoy the COLD weather,
Too bad I can't read the paper . . . I never got delivered today. Maybe the paper person froze to death during the night !
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