Top 10 Tips for Dealing with Cold Weather

Possibly you’ve noticed that your thermometers have dipped a bit in the last week or so. It’s cold outside.

Because the majority of my reading audience, like myself, are Southerners, we are not really equipped to deal with cold weather. It’s unnatural to us, sorta like hockey and grilling hamburgers and calling it “barbecue”.

I, however, being somewhat of an urbanite, a “Man of the World”, and having travelled to exotic places in the colder extremes north of here, like Raleigh, Knoxville, and Huntington, West Virginia, have experienced some freezography and chillometry in my lifetime.

In the lingering spirit of the recently-celebrated holiday season, and the bright promise of the coming new decade, I would like to share with you a few of my personal tips on dealing with the cold weather which is being heaped upon us.

Here, then, are Rod-Boys Personal Experience Tips for Dealing With the Freezin’ Cold Weather:

10. Dress like you’re a character from a Norman Rockwell picture. Many of his covers for the Saturday Evening Post featured people who appeared to be from Up North where it’s cold. Consequently, they were dressed differently that we dress in the South, wearing articles of clothing we’ve never even heard of, let alone worn. Earmuffs. Snow pants. Mittens. Scarves. Leg-Warmers. Stocking Caps.

9. Blubber. Typically, a large, thick, jiggly layer of fat surrounding your entire body is thought to be a bad thing. But not on days when the high temperature has a minus sign in front of it. On those days, blubber makes you the object of the affection of lots of cold, skinny people who would like to squeeze up against you to absorb a few of your raging BTUs.

8 Layers. This is the most basic of all staying-warm advice: dress in layers. For instance, you should wear an undershirt, a regular shirt, a sweatshirt, a sweater, an over-sweater, a jacket, a coat, a parka, and an overcoat. Add a couple of layers of Hefty Bags over that, and you’re gonna stay warm in Antartica.

7 If you drive a convertible, make sure it actually has a top on it. This particular tip comes from experience. When I was a high school senior, I drove an old beat up convertible that did NOT have a top on it. During the winter months, I wrapped up in a blanket each morning before I drove to school. (Actually, I don’t know why I still called it a convertible. The only thing it converted was my breath into steam.) On rainy days, I drove fast so I could lean up under the windshield and the cold rain would only hit my back.

6. Run for Congress. It only helps if you win. But if you do, you’ll get to move to the “hot air” capital of the universe!

5. College. Go to college, earn a degree, and go to work at a desk job, inside instead of outside. Then you can look out the window and watch all your drop-out friends freezing their tushies off while they wash cars and hawk tax services.

4. Duct Tape. I haven’t actually used this one before, but as we all know, duct tape will fix anything, including, I suppose, cold weather. If, for some reason it doesn’t fix the cold weather, then just add some WD40. It definitely fixes anything.

3. It’s not really cold… it’s just your imagination. Haven’t you been keeping up with Al Gore and his global warming stuff? After all, they gave him a Nobel Prize, so it has to be right.

2. Soup! Eating hot soup is the best answer of all to the cold weather, because not only does it warm you up, but it also fills your belly. Coffee and cocoa are also good at warming you up, but they don’t do quite as good of a job at filling your belly.

And the number one tip for dealing with cold weather is…..

1. Tickets! Buy tickets to somewhere warm, like Cancun, Jamaica, or the Caribbean. Because, in my lifetime of personal experiences which has included dealing with freezin’ cold weather, I have learned that the VERY BEST way of handling the cold…. is being somewhere else.

So here’s hoping YOU find a way to stay warm in the cold days ahead.

Hope you have a GREAT New Year, and a Super-Fantastic Decade!!!!