<p>I don’t live in one of the top 20, and I’m not happy either!!</p>
<p>Here it was almost 60 today and sunny, a beautiful day. People were out jogging in shorts and tank tops, the flowers are starting to bloom. It is very rare that we can brag about that in Seattle, in the winter. We’re usually whining about the endless gray.</p>
<p>The 305 will welcome you back with warm weather and blue skies, sally.</p>
<p>Another cold day here in the ol’ 813. Not as bad as yesterday. C’mon spring. Don’t dissapointed me. Bring on the 80s!</p>
<p>Flowers? What are flowers? Whaaaa. I’m sure all my roses are dead. My truck battery is alive so far though, and I’m grateful for that.</p>
<p>Round 3 begins for us on Monday in MN. SO. OVER. WINTER.</p>
<p>Just read the linked article about coldest cities and we are NUMBER 1 in front of even Anchorage, Alaska. @-) </p>
<p>Thank you, Niquii. I have been back five times in the last six months so I think about it often.</p>
<p>Meanwhile I am being enticed to move to the #1 cold city after my daughter graduates. I do love the Twin Cities, but even more of what we are having in #3 is a hard sell right now. (I feel your pain, BHM–we are looking at another school closing on Monday as well.)</p>
<p>Oy…I’m unsure if I want to move to a couple of the states that I’ve been interested in after I graduate…I’m unsure I can handle it, but I’m sure a fitting wardrobe is half of the struggle.</p>
<p>At this moment, I’m really…REALLY happy I didn’t go to WUSTL…</p>
<p>You really do get used to the cold just the way you can get used to the heat in FL. What is hard for a lot of people to get used to is not the cold but the lack of sunshine for half the year. The winter is very gray, and all the plants are dead so there is no green this time of year. You mainly just stay inside a lot unless you participate in winter sports… which is okay with me but is hard for some people. The cold isn’t bothering me at all and never does. The snow, when the roads are bad, is a little bit irritating-- but it is so beautiful to me it is worth it to live here. The beautiful snow and ice, to me, makes up for temporarily not seeing any green. A good winter wardrobe makes all the difference. </p>
<p>There is also really something to be said for the comfort of snuggling under a blanket by the fire in your favorite pajamas with a mug of something warm on a cold winter night. It might be my favorite thing.</p>
<p>I live smack dab in between two of the cities on that list and I don’t think it is any warmer in between them than within their city limits! However, I never get used to the cold. I’m approaching 49 years here and every year it is harder to deal with for me. I don’t want to leave the house for anything at all because I can’t stand shivering like that. If I never had to leave that house, it would be fine.</p>
<p>The whole winter wardrobe thing is so difficult. You bundle all up to tolerate getting to the grocery store, but then you’re IN the grocery store dressed for -10 and you’re sweating. And winter wardrobe business attire just doesn’t exist. My legs are frozen in a skirt, tights and boots when it is this cold. Then, again, you sit in your 72 degree office and you’re sweating because you put on all those layers to tolerate the drive to work. </p>
<p>I went and ran a few errands today so that hopefully I can avoid having to go anywhere but work for the next week. I have all these gift cards I got for Christmas but the last thing I want to do is go shopping. When it was really cold the week before last, I walked across a parking lot and seriously felt like if I smiled my face was going to shatter. I don’t know how the Alaskans do it. </p>
<p>One time, back when I was in college, we had -70 wind chills and I walked to class. One of my contacts was driving me crazy the whole time I sat in class and when I finally could go take it out, I found it had ripped in a weird pattern. The only thing I can figure is that it froze and cracked in my eye and then thawed out again. </p>
<p>My office fixes that for us by making it freezing indoors. I have been wearing my boots and scarf around the office for weeks with my coat over my lap as a blanket, and wishing I could type with gloves.</p>
<p>My winter wardobe changes for what I am doing. If I am only going to be walking across a parking lot and indoors otherwise, I will just wear a coat and scarf that will be easy to pull off and carry if necessary. If I am going to be outside a lot, I will wear layers. It works for me, I don’t mind being cold for under a minute. But I am young and hardy! And I ride horses. You don’t know cold until you take a riding lesson in January in an unheated barn. Your feet get so cold when you go to dismount you will fall if you arent careful because your legs are numb from the knee down.</p>
<p>I’m going to Indy in a couple of days. The low (and I will be outside during that time for a bit), is -15 degrees, not including the wind chill factor. How do people live in that?</p>
<p>Miserably. </p>
<p>For us, it’s pretty rare to be quite this cold and definitely not for an extended period. I’ve put more thought into how to make this more tolerable over the next week because I don’t know that my work will tolerate me working from home so much for very long. So, some of the ways to make it work:
- Remote start on your vehicle is a beautiful thing. You probably have to let the first start shut off and do it a second time to actually get heat in the car when you’re ready to use the car. Sadly, for me, this only works from home because my work is too far from where I park to be able to start it. IF I had a slightly newer car, I could use the OnStar phone app to remote start the car. Maybe by next winter I’ll have a vehicle capable of this.
- Errands- I took advantage of yesterday’s warmer (19 degrees is warmer?? Yes) temps to buy gas, hit up the grocery store to make sure I had everything I would need until next weekend and run a few other errands. I know I won’t want to run any errands this week. I have the essentials.
- Clothing- One of my errands should have been for better gloves. I need some better gloves. What I prefer most, actually, are the mittens that can flip back so I can use my fingers. Gloves are cold. My fingers get cold in them. The feel of the cold steering wheel through my gloves is not good. I had a rental car with a heated steering wheel during a college visit last fall. My next car will have a heated steering wheel with that OnStar remote start from my phone.
- More on clothing- Hats are good when I have to shovel or run errands, but I can’t wear them into work or my hair will just not be OK for work. I’m stuck on this one. I have earmuffs, but those don’t help much. I wish I could just wear a ski mask but again, wouldn’t look OK for work after taking it off! I’m seriously considering putting on sweats under my skirts this week with my boots and tights. I can slip them off at my desk. I have a really big sweater (from 85 pounds ago) that I think I can wear over my blazers and under my coat. I’m going to give that a try. It is ridiculously huge on me. On the days I wear slacks, I need to wear boots and warm socks instead of trouser socks and my ballet flats while going in. I’ll just have to take things with me and change. My feet being cold is the worst.
- Sad to say- since losing a lot of weight, (although there is still at least 40-50 more I would love to lose!), I am more cold. That fat really did insulate well. I’ll find other ways to cope though.
- Those gel pack type hand and foot warmers really do work well and I have a load of them in the basement left over from Boy Scout events. Time to haul those out. </p>
<p>2016Barnardmom, a lot of your tricks sound like things I did in elementary school – especially wearing “leggings” under my skirt and then taking them off when I got to school.</p>
<p>These days I’m wearing a pair of wool gloves under a pair of fleece mittens, tucked into the sleeves on my LLBean thinsulate coat, and my hands are still cold. Does anyone have down mittens? Do they work best?? I can dress in layers for just about every other part of my body, but even with all that my fingers get so cold it’s painful.</p>
<p>My mil has down mittens. She swears they are the best. I have a pair of wool mittens that are fleece lined and I find them toasty warm. </p>
<p>I keep telling myself that this is what I must go though for those gorgeous July days with low humidity and cool night. </p>
<p>My avatar is what we look like right now. I don’t know if you can tell but there is a foot + of snow on the deck rail. </p>
<p>When it’s this cold, I do NOT wear gloves…I wear mittens only. Mine are fleece lined with thinsulate. I find that being able to move my fingers around IN the mittens helps to keep them warm. The other thing you can do…get some of those handy dandy hand warming things that you put inside gloves. They are terrific inside mittens…warms the whole inside of the mitten!</p>
<p>deb922, where are you located? Your deck looks like mine.</p>
<p>Northern Lower Michigan. </p>
<p>Just removed last night’s snow–don’t know if it was worth the effort, as it’s ultra fluffy and will just blow back into my extremely long driveway as the wind continually picks up. </p>