BITTER BITTER

It was cold. How cold? It makes no matter how cold once it reaches a certain depth. You feel it in your bones. Your blood thickens to syrup and your cheek bones, never really felt before, now tingle with pin-like punctures and your brain begins to sense doom.

So, where to begin? Rosemarie and I have been away for the holidays. We went to the middle of Pennsylvania to visit our niece’s family for Christmas and then it was off to Philadelphia to spend a few days with good friends. The only negative was the weather. After living in Florida for several decades, your blood begins to thin. Temperatures below 50 degrees now feel much colder than you remember. If you have chosen to suddenly transition from a tropical to an arctic environment, great surges of insanity pulsate throughout your mind. Confucius say: Floridians who venture north in the winter suffer brain freeze. True, we must have been brain dead to travel to the American hinterlands in the wintry month of December.

It was a grand display of opulence put on at my niece’s house. Their family room was the scene Christmas morning as ten of us whipped up a frenzy of gift giving. This is how it looked just before the morning massacre commenced. Afterwards it was a site of mass destruction.

Did I mention it was bitter cold? Yes, bitter, bitter cold…like in the teens. You have to feel that kind of temperature on your cheeks to really get an appreciation of exactly how horrible it is. I sense that once you reach this depth of natural cruelty there is little more distinction between the teens and any degrees colder. I am sure it gets worse even though it is hard for me to imagine what that would be like.

It is almost laughable how you can board a plane in Philadelphia where it is 25 degrees, fly south to Fort Lauderdale in 2 1/2 hours, and then get off the plane where it is a balmy 78 .

We had a very enjoyable time seeing friends and relatives this Christmas holiday. Now we are home and it’s back to the routine…back to warm.  Guess where I’m staying? That’s right: Put!