Slave To Fashion

I bet if you asked people from warm climates what they thought the worst part of living in a cold climate was, most of them would say shoveling. They look at the news footage of people digging out from under a foot of snow and imagine that is pure hell. But, that is far from the worst part of winter. Sure, clearing the driveway is no fun, especially when the snow is wet and heavy but after that hour (or two) the task is done and your driving patterns can return to normal. Hell, it actually provides you with a pretty good workout, the kind of which would cost you a bundle if you wanted to trainer to work you up to that kind of sweat. Of course, there are other warm-climate dwellers who may guess it is the fact you can't do all the outside activities which you are normally have access to in the summer which is really the worst part about winter. And while it is true that you can go a little stir-crazy sitting inside for days on end, the forced solitude really is kind of nice in small doses. I mean, when you can't leave your house it makes you do all those things you have been promising to eventually get around to - whether it is catch up on the shows on your DVR, try some new recipes or simply get a lot of work done - those snow days help make you feel productive, where is you did that on a nice day you would feel guilty about wasting a perfectly good day sitting inside. Also, as a golfer with a bad back I appreciate the forced time off (and so does my wallet.) Anyway it is only the people who have truly experienced a few tough winters who can really know what the hardest part of going through this season is all about - the clothes.

Getting dressed during the winter sucks. First you have to be taunted by all the clothes you would much rather be wearing, such as light t-shirts and shorts. You want to know why people in Massachusetts start wearing shorts as soon as we have a day with temps in the mid-50s? Because we have been dreaming about putting on shorts since October. Also, you have to ignore anything which is too thin because the wind is going to find a gap in your armor and go right through that shirt if you let it. If you do decide a shirt is too nice to be hidden in the back of your closet for the next four months than you still have to figure out what shirt to put on underneath it, because layers are your ally here. (Please note that I did not say friend, because layers are not your friend. Friends don't make your clothes fit funny because by creating a situation in which there isn't as much room as there should be.) And of course, this bleeds into the next issue with winter clothes - laundry. Summer laundry consists of a few t-shirts, two pairs of shorts and maybe a bathing suit, which is a joke compared to winter laundry which is at least two pairs of jeans (more if you had to shovel that week), two shirts for every day of the week, thick socks and at least one sweatshirt but probably two. Do you people who live in warm climates have any idea how long it takes a sweatshirt to adequately dry in a dryer? Of course you don't, because that is a trick question - sweatshirts never get all the way dry. You could have a sweatshirt in the dryer for six hours and it will still come out with a wet patch somewhere on the hood.

Not only do you have to ignore half your closet the other half gets taken over by pairs of things you wouldn't think you would need. For example, gloves. Last week I told you about my new shoveling gloves. If you lived in a warm climate you may have assumed those are the only gloves I own but they aren't. I also have thinner gloves for those nights when it isn't quite as cold but still to cold for bare knuckles or perhaps I am going somewhere in which looking like I should have a stick in my hands for a hockey game isn't an appropriate appearance. That's right - nice, "fancy" gloves are a real thing. This is in addition to my three winter coats (shoveling, everyday and formal). As a man who thinks three pairs of jeans are more than enough it is a little crazy to think I have that many winter coats but at the same time I am not about to get rid of them because they all have a purpose. Then there are thick socks which are only to be worn while shoveling and thermal pants which come out once a year, if that. Frankly, I'm amazed I have any closet space left thanks to all these outfits and I am not a big clothes person. I can only imagine what kind of fresh hell this is for people who actually want to leave the house caring about what they look like. I'm always touting things which can serve more than one purpose and yet here I am filling half my closet with clothes which serve very specific purposes and only for very extreme conditions. Every winter I can only hope we are one season closer to the days of everyone wearing the same thing no matter the weather as happens in science fiction. At this point it would be more useful to me than a jetpack.

But, let's not sugarcoat this - I could deal with all of that (all of it), if I could just stop having to wear boots. Boots are a pain in the ass any time of year but they only get worse in the winter because they literally impact how you go about your day. You see, even though we all know it snows and even though we all know boots making walking in snow much easier, for some insane reason wearing boots around an office or in someone's house is frowned upon. That means you must immediately take them off and put on the shoes you carried with you or walk around barefoot. (This becomes an even bigger issue when one person breaks this rule and you suddenly step in a puddle of melted snow in just your socks, which I feel is grounds for justifiable homicide.) Thus, I have been known to walk into a place and immediately demand that plans be finalized just so I don't waste time taking my boots off in case we are headed right back out. Sadly it is not like there any alternative because it is not like I could wear sneakers instead. You know, for a guy who normally puts zero effort to thinking about what is on my feet this is not how I want to live my life. Of course, the good news is that these hassles are only temporary and in a few months the winter clothes are the ones pushed to the back of the closet to make room for the warm-weather clothes. This is the reason I have often said that people in cold-weather climates appreciate their nice days more than people who live in a place where it is like that every day - we know it will eventually be taken away from us. Maybe in the summer we should start sending our winter clothes down south and let them clean them up for us, then they would start to appreciate the nice weather they have. At the very least they won't look for us because it was only in the 50s one afternoon.