A Counterpoint to JGH's African Adventures

[GrannyNanny]

Since we've all been taking a warm-weather vacation with Jim and Sheila, I thought I'd inject a note of reality into the proceedings with an account of my trip to Costco yesterday morning.Temps at zero or slightly above, winds at 15-20 mph. For those of you lucky enough not to know what wind-chill is, those stats translate to about 10-15 below as felt on exposed skin.

Going to Costco, or any other store, is such a simple thing to do -- in the summertime -- but it is a real production in this kind of weather. Here is my yesterday's foray out in the cold.

Get up and dress in full winter gear -- long undies under jeans, long sleeved tee with warm sweater over it, thick socks, scarf at neck.
Put on outerwear -- hooded sweatshirt, followed by winter coat. Forget to keep hood of sweatshirt outside of coat (I need it to keep my head warm in the cold wind), so remove coat, flip up hood over head and resume coat. Dig gloves out of pocket of coat and put on.
Take off gloves to grasp tops of Ugg boots, which can't be grasped tightly enough when wearing gloves.
Don boots.
Get key from key rack by door and exit to garage, pulling on gloves enroute. .
Fumble key because of gloved clumsiness and drop it on dirty garage floor.
Retrieve key, wipe off the mud, thereby losing hold on gloves; then drop THOSE on dirty garage floor.
Finally manage both key and gloves--hands beginning to freeze--open car door and enter car.
Start car; begin backing out into snowy driveway.
Shove hood off head, because it obscures vision when backing out of garage and into street.
Put hood back on again as soon as car is moving forward: car is ice cold and won't warm up for several blocks or miles, and I have short, short hair and not much of it.
Drive to Costco, park in convenient handicap spot and grab fabric grocery bags from back seat.
Drop several bags in windy parking lot.
Retrieve bags by frantic dashes before they blow away-- corral them by stuffing them all inside one bag.
Remove gloves to push "lock" button on the car key remote, since button is too small to be pushed while wearing clunky gloves.
Put on gloves again -- the wind is awful: hands well on the way to being frozen.
Proceed into store and get shopping basket.
Take Costco card out of wallet; drop it in the slushy vestibule because of now-frozen hands.
Stop in second aisle to remove coat and gloves. Store has the heat up to at least 80 and I'm roasting already.
Shop. Find almost everything on the list. Proceed to checkout.
Stop before exiting to reverse undressing procedure -- put on coat, then remove AGAIN to get the sweatshirt hood out from under it, and put coat back on again.
Put on gloves; realize that hood can't be tied with gloved hands, so remove gloves again to do hood. Back on with the gloves.
Load bags into trunk, in face of 20 mph wind and zero temp. Get chapped cheeks for my pains.
Dig in coat pocket for car key -- can't feel it while wearing gloves, so take off gloves to retrieve key.
Find key. Resume gloves. Hands icy.
Return cart to cart bin, which is halfway down the block from handicap parking spots.
Query-- why provide handicap parking and then make handicapped people push carts all over the lot?
Hands now frozen solid, even though IN gloves.
Get in car, which mercifully starts, and drive away, grasping steering wheel with immobile hands.

After that I had to stop at the Costco gas pump too, which is a whole other story of cold and misery, but I'm getting tedious so I'll stop. In spring, summer and fall it is so easy to get in the car and go somewhere -- I forget how awful it is to do the same thing in winter, until the cold weather comes and I have to do it. The thing that really gets to me is those blasted gloves -- I feel like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, with clumsy padded fingers that I can't do anything with except drive the car. Bah, humbug!

[LucyGoose]

You poor thing.....you dropped everything....

[Linda P]

Phyllis, that's a familiar litany. Our home is in the country on a gravel road, so I would have to add 'navigate ice-covered bumpy slanted-towards-the-ditch-roads. That is why, when John retired, we decided to spend part of the winter in Texas.
Our trip to the grocery store yesterday was as simple as can be.

[char]

That is a great story of the "neverending trip to Cosco'. And one that all of us in the Winterwonderlands can relate to.
My husband and I went to Texas one winter, it was wonderful, but got very homesick. And when we came home, the kids (in their 40's) needed my support, so I went back to work, and have been working ever since.
I will say that working does keep my mind active and stimulates the brain cells. I just moan and groan every time I have to get out of bed in the morning.

My husband is now asking about when we will ever go on vacation again.

Char

[Chris_W]

And I keep asking myself, why would anyone inhabit an area that gets like this in the winter?

[ogrefcf]

And I keep asking myself, why would anyone inhabit an area that gets like this in the winter?

Because you grow such nice Hostas for the rest of us?

[thy]

LOL Owen

I know, even it have not been really cold this winter the wind have been driving me nuts. One thing I have learned is heavy thick gloves do not work exept for walks. I have some very soft leather ones with fur inside, I can do everything except swift my phone with them... press keys, find a coin ect

They are calling for frost... it is too late.. I want spring and have a primula and erantis blooming in the garden...

[GrannyNanny]

Chris' question is one I've been asking myself lately. However, my query goes like this: "Who in the world was it that told us Minnesota was a liveable place?" You see, I want someone else to blame it on! It was 28 degrees this morning; now at 7 PM it is pretty much at zero, with a biting wind making the wind chill a good minus 15. It's going down to -17 tonight, with wind chill at -35 or thereabouts. I'm perfecting my impersonation of Nanook of the North daily!!! Phyllis

[Linda P]

Phyllis, I was recounting your story to some friends who live in Minnesota in the summer, but now spend the winters here in the Rio Grande Valley. They were all nodding as they remembered their own adventures with winter outings, and shivering at the thought of it.

[jgh]

Using a lot of sunscreen... drinking a lot to prevent heat stroke... and unable to convince any of the people HERE that people live like that THERE!

thanks for the excellent story Phyllis... and the reminder of why we're only staying home for 2 1/2 weeks so that the final Idiots Bahati episodes will be published from our next trip to Honduras!

Stay warm - keep that hood up!

[GrannyNanny]

Our daughter, Clary, whom we unofficially adopted when she was an adult, is from the Dominican Republic and had never seen frozen water except as ice cubes in a cold drink. Her first winter in Minnesota, she had me take her to Como Park in St. Paul, and take her picture as she stood out on the frozen lake so she could send it home to her friends to show them that she wasn't lying when she had told them she could walk on the lake in winter! She also was amazed to see the fall colors earlier that year, because although she had seen photographs of fall in Minnesota, she just assumed that someone had painted the photos with those brilliant colors; she couldn't believe that they actually looked that way! I guess it just proves that wherever we are, we don't know at all how people elsewhere live! I envy Jim's cold drinks and warm sweat -- it's below zero tonight, with about a 30 mph wind -- wind chills down into the double digits. BRRRRR! Phyllis