Its cold out. No really. Its cold out. Its 61 degrees at 9:40 pm. Freezing. I need to turn the heat on in my apartment. This morning, I got out the wool peacoat. It's freezing! I've got the sniffles and I'm taking echinacea.
What?! 61 degrees and I'm cold? I lived in New York City for 13 and a half years for Gods sake. This is nothing. Wait! And before that, I lived in Albany, NY for the first 28 years of my life. What happened to me? 61 degrees is cold to me? Yes! Dag nab it! It is.
When I moved here from NY, I donated more than half my sweaters to Goodwill. I had a few coats too. I got rid of all but one. I'm moving to Los Angeles, I thought. What use would I have for these? What use indeed. You back in the Northeast may laugh and perhaps sneer at my complaining of the cold. But you try it. You move out here and see it you don't eventually convert too. If the temps drop below 60, you try and walk around in a short sleeve shirt or in shorts. You can't. I dare you. You'll be just like me.
It must be something in the air. It does something to our blood. After you've been living here for a while, your body adjust so you can no longer tolerate anything under 60. Or you acclimate to the point that you body doesn't remember what it felt like to live in a colder climate.
As much as I love the warmer climate here and as much as I hate the long cold hard winters of upstate New York...I do miss the seasons. We don't really get them here. All we get is a drop in the temperature and maybe some rain. That's it. The leaves don't change color. There is no smell of burning leaves in the air. And its always green (or maybe yellow and some browning but that's only because there's a drought here). That's our winter and fall. Rain. Cold. Nothing more. And at any time, the temperature can suddenly skyrocket to 90 degrees. It was in the 90s just a couple of weeks ago!
We weer complaining about the 90 degree heat. Now we're complaining about the cold temps, which really aren't that cold. Downright balmy compared to the East Coast. When did I become such a wimp? What happened to my blood? Am I no longer a true New Yorker? Am I a Californian now?
I always thought of myself as a New Yorker. No longer how long I live here, I still day I'm a New Yorker. Maybe I can't say that anymore? I still grumble at people that won't step in the crosswalk unless the Walk light is on. Please ! Bitch! I'm from New York City, we don't wait for no stinking Walk light!
I curse at cars that don't pull up all the way into the intersection when they are waiting to make a left hand turn. C'mon! Move INTO the intersection. Don't wait behind the crosswalk until there is a gap to turn. Los Angelenos! Geez!
Yeah, despite my lower tolerance of the cold, I am still a died in the wool New Yorker and you can never take that away from me!
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