It’s 47 degrees here in my city, which means one thing – it’s time to break out the big coat – winter is upon us. Wrap the pipes! Cover the plants! Crank up the heater!

Now I know some of you are thinking, “47? That’s shorts weather” and to you I say “Yankee, go home.” Forty-seven is the temperature at which I begin to burrow under layers fleece and dig out my Homer slippers. (Yes, Homer Simpson – they’re hideous but about the warmest slippers I’ve ever had and they keep the cats amused, which can occasionally be confused with disgusted or contemptuous.)

You see, I don’t “get” cold. Well, I get cold – and that happens when the temperature dips below 65, but I don’t “get” it and I sure don’t take a hankering to it. Now, I’ve been places that were colder and I always show up prepared. Prepared for a Central Texas kind of cold, because that’s the kind of cold I know. What happens next is my friend Jerry invariably drops his jaw, makes me bring out everything in my suitcase and declares everything unfit. Then there are quick calls made around to see who has winter clothes I can borrow for my stay in the cold. Then I end up wearing everything I brought for several days straight (behold the power of body odor) along with someone else’s heavy wool coat. I did this in New York at Christmas and again in the fall in Montreal. In fact, you can see the outfit I wore for about 4 days if you go to Flickr in the New York set. I had shed the wool coat for that morning, but I’m wearing almost everything I brought in that shot.

One thing the world needs to understand is in Texas there’s nothing you can buy locally, unless it’s a ski shop, that will allow you to survive north of the Mason Dixon line. If it freezes where I live, the world literally shuts down. Trust me, you don’t want Texans driving on ice or snow. We don’t have snow tires, we have zero experience driving on ice and most Texans believe kitty litter on the sidewalks and overpasses is much better than rock salt. In fact, I don’t think people south of Dallas know why you’d use rock salt. (For the record, you can really bust your tush on kitty litter – that stuff is slick when wet. I swear the person who thought of throwing litter out never scooped a cat box.)

I guess the bright side is I get to renew my quest to find those perfect pair of boots.