I'm So Cold...I'm Shivering...

Every year, I become increasingly aware of how soft I've become.

It used to be that, come fall and winter, I was hearty. It was my time to shine. Cold? Pfah! Not until your eyebrows have frozen! I'm one of those idiots who would be in Green Bay, shirtless, with something painted on my chest rooting on my Packers. Or, at least, I used to be one of those idiots.

Something has happened over the last seven years. I've lost that constant internal fire that kept me warm (trust me, the insulating layer of blubber is still there, probably moreso now than when I was living in the midwest). My Calcifer has gone out. Someone call Sophie!

I took my kids to their fall carnival this morning. It was probably somewhere in the mid-fifties when we arrived. There was a pretty stiff wind coming straight out of the north...but still. It wasn't like I was left upon the wild, windswept plains of Siberia. No, I was still in North By God Carolina, but I felt the cold. I felt every biting, snarling, wind-whipped attack on my body from it. I wasn't even underdressed! I was wearing a long-sleeve t-shirt and a wind-breaker. This would be standard attire well into December for me back when I lived in Indiana. Now? I wanted to curl up and cry like a little girl.

No offense to the little girls out there.

Being the rather parsimonious penny-pincher that I am, I was refusing to turn the heat on until November. Bold, but I do live in the South now, a place where people from the north go to escape the winter chill. However, the other day I came home and my wife was wearing a coat indoors and, I'm not certain, but I think I could see my breath misting out as I exhaled. I dozed off on the couch later and awoke with my elbow--of all things--chilled and numb.

Grumbling curses to anyone who would listen, I got up, turned on the heat, and immediately felt better. Well, maybe not immediately. There was that prolonged stink of dust burning on heating coils that filled the house. After that faded, then I felt warm.

I'm not about to bitch, though. Despite the fact that I've softened up in the face of Old Man Winter's icy breath, I still prefer that to the hot and steamy summers. I can at least dress for winter. I can only take so much off for the summer before they arrest me or try to roll my beached ass back into the ocean.

As for the carnival, it was fun. The kids had a good time, and that's what matters. Although, we waited forever to get onto the bungie run--you know, that thing where you strap yourself into a harness and run as fast as you can down an inflatible aisle with a bungie chord attached to your back? Well, we waited because there was no one to supervise the "ride", and so people were letting their kids take fifteen, twenty minutes a turn. Finally--and predictably--just as Tank was climbing into the thing, someone showed up to supervise. "You get three turns," she trilled.

This lasted about 30 seconds.

The next ride over was an inflatible obstacle course. No one was watching that one. So, we went there. I paid my four tickets and let him run through it five times. It was like vigilante justice. I was kind of like Batman on the playground--except, you know, without the multi-millionaire playboy alter-ego, millions of dollars worth of awesome gadgets, kickass car, cape, cowl, miles of caves beneath my sprawling and stately manner and lantern-like jawline. So, really, I was nothing like Batman.

Because I'm pretty sure Batman never gets cold.