I've never been shy about the fact that I hate winter. Loathe it. Despise it. The cold makes every bone in my body hurt, every joint feel like a knife is through it, reminds me of every wound I've ever had. People drive like bigger dumbasses than usual, you have to wake up earlier to get to work on time, and scraping the ice off your windows every morning is a nuisance. Shoveling snow is work on top of everything else you have to do, and if you get too much, you have to climb up on the damn roof to knock it down. Don't even get me started on the barrage of holiday bullshit that I'd rather never see again.
Winter is a pain, literally and figuratively. I'd do without if I could, but I'm stuck in the middle of winter territory.
All of this.
I'm kind of more inured to the pain of cold temperatures than the people of this region, though, so I often come out looking like an awesome badass. The other day I came to work with a long-sleeve shirt and a jacket over my arm, and everyone was like, "WTF it's so fucking freezing out how are you not cold."
For one, it was fucking fifty, you goddamn pansies. For two, I was raised for the majority of my life in South Dakota and Colorado.
You know not the pain of winter. Not until you say, "Hey, let's build a snow fort under our deck!"
And your friend replies, "Why would we do that? All we have to do is knock open a door and we already have a snow house built under, around, and over your deck."
Once, growing up, it was so cold and the wind-driven snow so powerful, I had to run fifteen feet at a time, drop to my face, dig a hole deep enough to get my head into, WAIT FOR FEELING TO RETURN TO MY PRECIOUS FACIAL FEATURES, then run another fifteen feet.
No, see, it gets chilly here. It hasn't been cold yet. Cold is spitting and watching it bounce.