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Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Winter Has Arrived

Since arriving home to cold temperatures in Paris back in September I have been living in fear of winter's arrival. I realized the extent of my fear this past week when we were blessed with a random week of warm beautiful weather. So I was chatting with my friend as we were laying in the sun in the park and telling him how afraid I am of winter coming this year and how odd that is since I'm usually so excited for winter. He then pointed out that I'm now coming from a Parisian summer, not a Texan summer, and heading into a Parisian winter, not a Texan winter (he's a Texan as well). So I then realized he was right, I just left a summer where I enjoyed the temperatures most of the time, I never had the chance to get frustrated with the heat and I am not heading into a mild refreshing winter but a full, real, if you will, winter. So while I was happy to realize I just spent a year going through what I would call real seasons, despite what I would call a rather chilly spring, I became even more fearful of the approaching winter. At that time I wasn't sure how much longer our great weather would last, but I knew it couldn't be that much longer. I woke up sunday to a so so day and considered our great weather to be gone. I dressed for winter monday morning and left for work only to be surprised with a rather warm beautiful day again. I had lunch in the park and was happy to see winter was holding back a little longer.

However, I woke up this morning with memories of yesterday and dressed for the warmer temperatures. Only this time when I left for work it was grey and very cold. I stayed in for lunch and when I left to go home it was already getting dark, it was still cold and still grey leaving me to conclude that winter has officially arrived. Hard to believe just 3 days ago I was laying in a park in a tank top, with barefeet, and my jeans rolled up, surrounded by people in their bathing suits. I guess I knew it was coming and it had to come eventually. The only thing getting me through this is the fact that I know mid winter I get to return to my mild Texas winters I've come to appreciate in some form.

In an update on my previous post, today there was a whole shelf devoted to christmas candy set up in my grocery store. At the same store I found a shelf about 1/8 the size of the christmas candy shelf devoted to all things Halloween. I found myself staring at the Halloween shelf for quite some time missing Halloween decorations. Had it not been for the fact that I'm so broke, I would have bought that Halloween candle. But anyway, I think this takes the cake for the most premature decorating/holiday preparations and it's coming from France, who would have guessed?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

People were in their bathing suits? I can imagine that it was over 80 degrees there (don't know what that is in celsius since I'm a dumb American). It's just like in Texas (but opposite) when we get a "cold front" and it gets down to the 60s and people break out the scarves and beanies.
2006 summer you better go tubing or toobing! That's what HOT texas summers are good for. God bless the redneck who thought of that one. Good job Billy Bob.

Zac said...

It makes you wonder if those Europeans caused this themselves by setting up x-mas decorations over two months in advance. Then again, maybe we could try that here were it is still 90+ degrees outside! Thanks for the tip on keeping comment spammers at bay somewhat.