I Hate the Dog Days of Winter, Doggone It
These are the dog days of winter.
Oh, I know, technically it's the "dog days of summer," and we have those, too, but nothing compares to late winter in the Midwest for really draining the joy from every moment you spend outdoors.
Recently here, it's been cycling through the winter prairie levels of Dante's Inferno, going from cold to snowy to icy to freezing, back to snowy, to slushy to rainy and then taking a detour through something I've started calling "mush," which is a gray slush/snow/mud mix so particular to the region that we should patent it if we ever figure out a reason for anyone to buy it.
These are the days when it's bleak and miserable outside, and there's no way to cheer yourself up other than leaving out your Christmas decorations until March -- not that I have any choice considering the other day I tried to pull up the metal Santa in our front yard and realized he was frozen solid into the ground.
In recent years, Midwesterners have been trying to defeat the winter-weather blues by going overseas for help. I keep hearing lots of talk about the Danish concept of hygge, which is about drinking hot chocolate or wrapping yourself in wool blankets or warming yourself before the hearth of your Scandinavian superiority or something like that. Hygge allegedly makes you forget how terrible winter is, like, for instance, how it takes 45 minutes to dress yourself for leaving the house.
There's the long underwear, and the $45 socks that sound crazy expensive the first year you move to the Midwest, until one day, your tootsies freeze into ice nuggets and the fancy hiking socks magically transform into a prudent investment. You also need boots, and no matter how outdated or "basic" (as the kids say) Uggs may be in other parts of the country, they'll enjoy a consistent level of Midwestern success because those hairy shoes are warm.
Then you get out your gloves and hats, preferably waterproof and insulated, and then, of course, you strap on your good winter coat. It takes an age.
I, unfortunately, am still on the hunt for the ultimate winter coat (that costs less than $1,000). Last year, I thought I'd found the holy grail when I read negative reviews of a coat from people who said it was too much like wearing a sleeping bag.
But it turns out that though the coat is huge and puffy and makes it look like if I fell over, you could roll me down the street, it's lacking something that every good winter coat should have, which is a panel over the zipper to prevent wind from burrowing into the microscopic gaps between the zipper's teeth and turning your guts into frozen goo, even if you're carrying a little extra Midwestern chub.
About 337 days of the year, I tell myself I could really stand to drop 15 pounds, but then February rolls around and I thank the gods of melted cheese products that I have some insulation on my bones.
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