The Warmth of the Sun

Last week it got down to thirty three degrees here at 'Casa de Alan', and I along with the rest of South Florida acted like the pussy's we are and bitched and moaned about the bitter cold. How, you wonder, did a guy who grew up in Chicago and faced temperatures in the -20 degree range become such a whiner about how cold it is in Florida? Like they say, my blood has thinned over the twenty years I have lived here. It is so thin that I wonder why it isn't just seeping out through my skin. Also, I was pretty much a pansy about the cold when I lived up north. That is after all why I moved here, to be warm despite all the crabby old people, loud New Yorkers, and rude French Canadians, who I have had to put up with these many years.

One reason the cold feels so bad here, is that I own an old house that was not built to keep out the cold nor to keep in the air-conditioning. The windows are leaky little slats of glass, that pass the air like an old man eating chili. Then there is the so called "furnace", which is actually no more than a glorified space heater with a high powered fan, that sucks up kilowatts of electricity at a fantastic rate.

The fact that we don't dress correctly for the cold, is another cause of our discomfort. Most of the year we walk around looking like bums in our shorts, tank tops, and flip flops, then suddenly one day the weather changes and we've forgotten how to dress for it. On the night I crossed over into Florida, twenty years ago, I took off my winter coat and threw it into a trash can. After all, I wouldn't ever need that thing again. I found out later that December, when the temperature dropped to twenty seven degrees on Christmas Eve, that I probably should have kept the coat. At least I have the fact that cold spells never last long here to keep my spirits up. This week the temperatures will shoot back up into the eighties, and I can put my heavy winter coat back in the closet for another few years. Hopefully the dog hasn't dragged my flip flops off too far.