Toasty

When I stepped outside this morning to let the cat out and pick up the Times, the sun was shining and the air, though a little cool, was indeed warmer than it had been in a while.

"It's like spring out there," I told my mom around noon, when she dragged herself out of bed. "It's warm."

"Yeah," she grunted. "It's in the twenties."

I paused, then went to look at the thermometer just outside the kitchen window. It generally reads a few degrees warmer than the actual temperature outside.

It read 25 degrees Fahrenheit. Twenty-five. Seven degrees below the freezing point of water. And, in actuality, it was at least three degrees colder than that when I went to get the paper. This, now, is balmy. Yes, spring-like and balmy. I've spent so many days... weeks, really... in single-digit-degree weather with sub-zero nights, that I can't consider twenty-five all that cold anymore. I stood outside the used bookstore this afternoon, waiting in line to buy my textbooks, and I didn't need a hat or gloves. The kids around me shivered and whined, but I stood there, happily reading my book, in no big rush to get inside.

I can now boast to have acclimated myself to below-freezing temperatures and call anyone complaining about 30-degree weather a pussy. Yes, I'm a psychotic, thick-skinned, snow-bound Northerner with a capital "n". Bu-ha!