I resent being embodied in meat

[grammarwoman]

Because this flesh of mine insists on being fed, but can't decide on what sounds good, except for those things that are high in calories and low in nutrients. (Ice cream! Chocolate! Deli meat and cheese!) I guess the chronic sleep deprivation is stoking the cravings for sweets and fats, to stimulate/simulate brain fuel, but GAH, would it kill you to want some vegetables instead?

I also would like to register a complaint about this meat brain. It says hateful things about me, refuses to concentrate on necessary tasks or even skim and close browser tabs and instead would prefer to spend hours watching Youtube, and is in general annoying and hard to operate. (Like, I want to want to watch Festivids, but the brain weasels hiss at me for having missed participating the second year in a row and will gleefully taunt me for the offerings everyone else is sharing that are better than I would have done anyway. FFS, brain. Could you not be such an asshole?) I am resentful and sullen, whilst simultaneously grateful, that twee advice like "have you tried exercise and sunlight?" do actually help my mood. I think my teen's attitude is rubbing off on me.

The only bright spots with respect to my physiology are that the current cold weather and snow are making me very happy (my Northern European genetics are gleeful about the weather in a way that reminds me of my friends' Husky - let us go out and romp! It's invigorating!), and somehow *knock on wood* I have managed to avoid the annual post-holiday malaise. It might be that I got a flu shot, it might be the post-nasal, coughing misery that was October and November already covered that ground, but I am supremely grateful to be relatively healthy. Now if I could ban freaking RAIN in JANUARY, such that I can go outside and enjoy the sun on a regular basis, that would be lovely.

Am I alone in loving the cold? Surely there must be other people out there who appreciate that you can always put on more layers. In any case, I hope you all have warm places to burrow into and hot beverages to savor.

Comments

[heresluck]

Bodies! Why so difficult? Grr. (Come visit! I will feed you delicious vegetables.)

I love winter and cold weather. ...though I admit that right now it's a little too Polar Vortex-y even for me. Brr.

[grammarwoman]

I have been meaning to email you about coming to visit! I have vacation time to use before the company's end-of-fiscal cutoff in April, and a long weekend with you sounds like a lovely way to spend it.

[heresluck]

Yes, do! I will have a couple of good long-weekend possibilities in March. Though be warned that, depending on your timing, I might put you to work helping me strip wallpaper. Hee.

[grammarwoman]

Gotta sing for my supper somehow! :)

[catwalksalone]

I have come to the conclusion that January in the Northern hemisphere is a month where we just have to be incredibly kind to ourselves, so do the stuff that makes you feel better, and try not to feel guilty about not always doing things “right”. What is that even anyway? *hugs*

I love the cold when it’s a sharp, crisp, blue sky day, but not so much when it’s accompanied by blatty rain that can’t get up the gumption to be snow. I do not love defrosting my car at 6:45 in the morning, though.

[grammarwoman]

*HUGS* Even while liking the cold, I think bears and other hibernating animals are on to something with the sleeping for months; it would be a great way to get through the short days and gloom.

Who invited rain in the winter? Bad idea, weather! I am very spoiled that I can park my car in the garage. If I had to scrape my car off every day, I would have a different opinion about cold and frost.

[cupidsbow]

I definitely prefer Aussie winters to summers. Sorry your brain is tormenting you. Bodies are the pits sometimes.

[grammarwoman]

Thank you! How wintry are Aussie winters? You guys don't see a lot of snow, I imagine.

Bodies - who designed these things anyway? So many problems in the execution of them!

[cupidsbow]

A few places do get snow, but they are mostly resorts and so on, not cities. It can get cold in winter (that is 10c to around 3c, and occaisionally lower, but not below -10c anywhere people regularly live). It often feels colder, though, taking wind-chill into account -- we have some of the windiest cities in the world. It also gets surprising cold at night outside of the cities (bricks and roads etc work as a heat bank), because most of the inland is desert, so hot in the day, cold at night, very cold at night in winter.

You probably think that sounds very mild. But that only tells half the story. Our summers are actually the extreme weather season. They are very very hot. 28c to 35c is common, which isn't so bad, but it's typical to have stretches of weather of a week or more where every day is between 36c to 48c, and typically hotter inland. The hole in the ozone layer is better, but you will still get burned in direct sunlight within 15 minutes in the middle of the day, no matter your skin type. In cities the gardens tend to make it a humid heat, but outside of them it's so dry you are likely to dehydrate without even realising it -- our deserts tend to be really dry, and that probably sounds obvious, duh it's a desert, but deserts I've seen in other countries still have water on the ground in places (rivers and so on), and ours do not in the same way. And in February, the hottest month, cyclones regularly come down the coast, so it's ~38c and humid while it's coming, then gale force winds and rain with a bit of a temp drop, and then back to ~38c and humid.

Basically, imagine an exact inversion of your weather. Instead of extreme cold in winter, we get extreme heat in summer, with all of what that implies. It's superficially easier, because we don't need to clear snow etc, but you can die pretty easily if you don't take it seriously.

[grammarwoman]

Fascinating! Thank you for sharing that; Australia has long been on the list of places I would love to visit some day, so this is a lovely peek.

We get both extremes in the Midwest; summers get past 90F, with ungodly humidity, and down to 20F or below in the winter. With climate change, the weather is getting ridiculously chaotic. A week or two ago, we had 50F, and today we have -10F.

We are way far inland, so we don't get hurricanes, but being in flat farmland we do get tornadoes from spring through fall, and those are plenty scary.

[cupidsbow]

If you ever make it to Perth let me know. :)

I'm pretty glad I've never had to experience a tornado. They look terrifying.

[grammarwoman]

I've huddled in basements for a few nearby tornadoes, but luckily I've never had one go right over my head and take off the roof.

I will keep your offer in mind! :D

[(Anonymous)]

Robot bodies now!

[grammarwoman]

Robot bodies! Remote sleeves for easy travel! Easily replaceable joints! Ah, well.

[kass]

I do know others who are gleeful about the cold in a Husky-like fashion, including my own child, which is a bafflement to me, but hey, he's his own person.

I send love.

[grammarwoman]

<3

If I were closer, I would take him out for cold weather walksies and Pokemon nattering so you could stay inside and cozy.

[monanotlisa]

My mostly Central and Eastern European genetics hate cold and rain enough for me to emigrate, so...more power to you and your Northern ones?

Brains, though: definitely weird! Mine are okay on the nutrition front; I prefer savory foods to be lean and full of veggies left and right, and in fact wish my office cafeteria used way less grease and way leaner meat. Sweet things, though? YES BRING ME A PINT OF ICE-CREAM. ANOTHER! :P Same with cake. (I don't care for chocolate, though.)

[grammarwoman]

I'm a European mutt, but mainly German and Swedish; my college friends called me a Scandinavian princess from the way I'd perk up in winter.

I have to wonder if my diminished sense of taste and smell are somewhat to blame, as I mainly pick up on extremes of mouth feel (mmmm, creamy and crunchy things!) and taste (sweets and spicy); subtle flavors are lost on me.

[ghost_lingering]

I don't know which is worse: bodies or brains. A question I ponder often.

I love the cold (wearing SWEATERS and LAYERS) but I do admit I do not envy the folks I know in the midwest with the negative thirty degrees and such. NYC has made me weak.

[grammarwoman]

I think bodies and brains are in cahoots, conspiring against us, so they're both the worst.

I do have an advantage being a smug suburbanite, that I can drive my car out of my garage and to a parking spot whenever I need to go anywhere, so I'm not much at the mercy of public transit and walking and such. If I needed to lug an armload of groceries down five windy and cold blocks, I might change my tune.