A strange land indeed…

Southern California is the only place I have been thus far where you can find individuals where capris and winter coats, or flip flops and gloves at the same time. In England it is not uncommon to find women wearing stringy tops and ridiculously undersized dresses in the dead of winter under their parkas but usually only on a weekend night. Here in SoCal it can actually get quite chilly in winter. And please note that I said “chilly” not cold, not freezing because, yes, I know that the rest of the country, more or less, is in the negatives on a warm day. However this does not take away from the fact that I think I am more cold here, more often than I ever was back up north in the Windy City. My apartment for example is 60º. Warm for outside in early January if you are in IL, very cold for someone who is already cold regularly while inside her apartment. My butter that sits on my counter in its new cute butter dish does not melt. It is as if my butter were sitting in the refrigerator chilled to a solid not sitting out on my counter hoping to become melty.

And I kid you not when I say I am much colder here than I was back in Chicago. Here buildings are not insulated. Heat does not stay in. I freeze. I layer but there are only so many layers of blankets one can wrap around themselves before movement just becomes too restricted to be of any use. I now go to bed with a hoody on and I just don’t mean a hooded sweatshirt. I mean I wear a hooded sweatshirt with the hood up to bed!

So now I go to make some tea and add another blanket layer.