5 Secrets to Surviving Winter in New England

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being warm, chocolate, coziness, Down, Happiness, Hygge, New England, Surviving Winter, Surviving Winter in New England, Tips for Surviving Winter, Vacation, winter, winter sport, winter vacation

 

I like to tell people I was made in a warmer climate. California-girl raised in New York: winter in my memory is an eternal wasteland spent shivering by indoor heaters and staring wanly out at the bleakness outside for about six months straight while struggling to stave off seasonal depression. It wasn’t until I married my New Hampshire husband and moved to Boston that I discovered five secrets to surviving winter in New England. Did I say survive? What about thrive? They are as follows!

Secret #1) Invest in Down

If you’re like me you own any number of coats comprised of cotton, wool, and cold-resistant synthetic materials. THESE DO NOT COUNT. They may look warm, or sound warm, (wool, after-all, starts with a reassuring “w,” amIright?) but for the perpetually cold and the New England onslaught of sub-freezing temperatures they are NOT warm ENOUGH.  You need down. Several inches of it. Good to -20°F and reaching your knees. The key here is not just that you are warm, but that you are SO warm you can step outside and not even notice the change in temperature. You’re so warm the FEAR of being cold is completely irradiated. Miss your bus and stuck on the side of the road? Tossed into a snow ditch and lost to the world for 5 hours? You’re SNUG AS A BUG IN A LITTLE DOWN RUG!

Bonus points: A down coat with a down hood and pockets—I’ve found I don’t even need to bring (read: remember to bring) a scarf, hat, or gloves because the down hood and down pockets keep my extremities encased in warmness. Also consider investing in Canadian-made knee-high, water-wicking snow boots. (I’ve had great success with these from Pajar. Black is always fashionable!) Double-bonus points: a fluffy down comforter for your nightly delight!

Secret #2) Don’t Put Away Your Christmas/Winter Decorations

Let’s be honest: November is still Fall. You have a lingering summer tan, the occasional leafy tree, and the bustle of holiday preparation is carrying you through. The almost-Thanksgiving through post-New Years season is such a rush of holiday adrenaline you might actually be enjoying the cold. Until January.

Mid-January hits and all the fun is over. I made the mistake one year of bringing our my spring decorations on a hot day in February: THREE MONTHS of COLD, SNOWY, SLEETY MUD TOO EARLY!

So what’s the secret? LEAVE YOUR WINTER DECORATIONS UP! Don’t box up the festive. Leave the evergreen branches out! Your winter plates. Red bows and napkins. Plaid blankets. Maybe de-Christmas a bit in mid-late January (but then again I know people who leave up their trees all year long). Think medieval yule-log and breath it into your house. Bring in pine-cones from outside and make table-runners and window decorations. Cut out paper snowflakes. DIY. Do what you gotta do to make your house festively WINTER for the long months of… actually winter. (Read: in New England, through most of April.)

Secret #3) Take Up a Winter Sport

I credit this tip to my husband. Winter in his childhood is a season of hallowed and happy memories because winter meant perpetual romps through snowy forests and competitive X-Country Skiing. I did neither of these things. I stayed inside till I looked like a pale, atrophied ghost of sadness.

You NEED to get outside. Vitamin D. General back to nature-ness. Healthy activity. Ward off the stir-crazyness. So many good reasons.

The easiest activity is obviously to just start walking outside (see aforementioned investment in good boots and coat). Honestly this doesn’t appeal very much to me. Other options include skiing (if you gots the monies), X-Country Skiing (if you has the lands), or ice-skating. I’ve chosen ice-skating. Even if I only get out to skate twice a winter that’s about a 200% improvement on not going out at all.

Secret #4) Take a Vacation Between February & April

Two years ago we took a real, 10 day, out-of-state vacation in July. TERRIBLE IDEA. Do you know when New England is really nice? In JULY. New England summers are sublime. Falls are fantastic. Spring is surprisingly short but very nice. WINTER IS SIX MONTHS. When should you go on vacation? WHEN IT’S AN ARCTIC WASTELAND OUTSIDE.

Repeat after me: I will not go AWAY on vacation during the nicest months in New England.

If you’re going to GO somewhere: go in February-April. A trip during these months not only breaks up the long, cold monotony but also gives you something to look forward to and a much-needed vitamin D boost.

Why not earlier in the year? Well, like I’ve said, the holidays carry you through till January. January is the real beginning of winter, it’s the buckle-down-and-stay warm month. No point skipping out. It is also historically the most likely month to have storms so best to avoid for canceled flights. Honestly, February goes by pretty fast but it’s your call. I recommend March or April for a vacation. March because it’s the last official month of winter. April because, in the words of T.S. Elliot,

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

April gives you all hope and no fulfillment. It’s a tease of a month. Cruel and heartless. It’s snowed three times this past April. Leave if at all possible.

Secret #5) Embrace the Dutch concept of Hygge

Do you know what the best part of it being cold outside is? the WARMNESS inside. Hygge (“hue-ga”) means coziness in Dutch, but for the Dutch “hygge” coziness transcends physical sensations and incorporates the soul. It’s tapping into what makes winter togetherness cozy and embracing it fully.  The hot-cocoa after the snowy-romp, the fire on the hearth while it snows outside, the flannel-blanket-cuddling with a loved one while the earth outside is swathed in white. Hygge gets the Dutch through winter and it can get you through to!

Tips? Invest in a few jars of your favorite hot-cocoa mix. Wear flannel pajamas and have plaid throws on your couch. Eat dinner by candle-light. Have people over and feast on soup and french bread. Read over-sized books. Marathon-watch a TV series. Better yet? Watch movies WHILE drinking hot-cocoa WHILE wrapped in a plaid blanket in your flannel pjs WHILE drinking MORE hot-cocoa while snuggling somebody you love who is ALSO drinking hot cocoa. You get the idea.

Bring our your bright copper kettle on and pull our your warm woolen mittens. Fluffy slippers. Candles. Polar-bear mugs and penguin plates. Soups. Stews. Tea. & Company.

Did I mention CHOCOLATE?

And don’t let it up for four months. Worried about putting on pounds? SEE THE BEARS. You are trying to get through WINTER without all the sleeping. No guilt! The extra layer will not only keep you warm: if it’s from chocolate it’s worth its weight in happiness.

And there you have it. 5 Secrets for Surviving a New England Winter! NOW GO GET COMFY!

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It’s The Little Things

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anxiety, college, God, papers, printers, trust, writing

I had a God-thing happen today. A little divine intervention—stepping in for some fellow college students who probably had no idea.

It was 4:30, half an hour from my paper-due-date, and after five printings on the one and only wearily-working library printer I dashed off and deposited the manuscript safely at my professor’s door. And then it was on to the next paper. 

Back in the library I industriously researched, lining up five JSTOR critical essays to print off. It was 4:50. I clicked the button to print off the first article—and several boxes popped up asking me to accept this-and-that list of legal conditions.

Suddenly a heavy wave of exhaustion flooded over me. I didn’t click the accept button. I went limp as a day-old-daisy in the chair and stared at the screen, unmoving, for fully 30-60 seconds.

What brought me out of my revelry was a sudden onslaught of anxious exclamations from behind me. There—hovering around the one working printer—was a crowd of eight or ten people—all frantically trying to print off (and sort through) their papers before their 5 o’clock deadline.

I had to smile. God hadn’t wanted me printing me just then.

So student, somewhere—who got your paper in on time by the skin of your teeth: just know you could have been waiting for my 30-85 pages of research to print off.

So know that God manages even the little things, because He cares for you. 

Let Everything That Has Breath Praise The Lord

Tags

beauty, blessing, college, dentist, God, life, orthodontist, pain, trust, wisdom teeth

Today Yours Truly had a melt-down. Not a radioactive melt-down. Just a sweet, sticky pile of melted ice-cream kind of melt-down (‘cept a whole lot saltier).

You see I’ve been teething of late. Like a baby. I can relate with their tears now: that burning, aching, soreness in the center of your noggin. So close to your brain. If I were a baby I’d cry about it. A baby can’t compare it to falling off a bike, or an amputation, or nuclear war. It’s the worst pain they’ve ever been in and it’s pretty bad.

Wisdom (incarnated in my teeth) decided to visit the left side of my mouth first. A dear friend made me a homeopathic serum of coconut  and clove oil and it did wonders for my swelling gums. Then, wonder of wonders, the pain went away.

And, like a fool, I thought my troubles were over. Maybe that’s why Wisdom decided to revisit.

Mind-you, I was supposed to have my wisdom teeth out over the summer. The dentists said so. “Yeah, you should get those out,” they said in a very nonchalant, off-handed-suggestion sort of way. Like, “Maybe you should try onion-and-tomato ice-cream.” Like it’d be good for me but understandably unpleasant. So needless to say it didn’t happen.

Well when two days ago I woke up with seething, pressurized pain on the OTHER side of my mouth, I wished I had been wiser. I sat through classes with my hand massaging my jaw all day. I also suffer from TMJ, so my mouth was freaking out, too. I couldn’t sing in choir. Then last night the pain was so bad I couldn’t concentrate–I fell asleep (ever-so-slowly) with a hot-pack against my face.

Remember those children’s illustrations where the character has their head tied up in white cloth under their chin with a bow on top? They wear a face of great discomfort and their cheek’s the size of a tennis-ball? That’s how I felt.

Thanksgiving break hasn’t time for surgery. Waiting till Christmas would mean over a month of pain and meds, AND risking infection, orthodontic work getting messed up, or the teeth attaching to the bone. Immediate action was called for.

So my mother and I slipped into high-gear, and a flurry of e-mails (something near 20) were exchanged in a matter of an hour or two trying to figure out where to go in the middle of nowhere in Michigan for oral surgery (and as soon as possible!). Needless to say, working through brain-waves intermingled with radiating dental pain was bound to go awry. I had called one place, thinking it was the dentist who could give a consultation that would enable me to have prescribed medication, and miraculously got an appointment for a half-hour later. I’d gone over to the college Nurse’s Office (leaving lunch early to get there before they closed), and there I got a host of directions including how to get to said dentist office. (Did I mention I don’t have a phone or car?) A college-security gentleman drove me over to the place. “Take care of your pain!” he called as he dropped me off.

But no sooner had I arrived and started filling out paper-work then we discovered that I was at the wrong place! The appointment I’d made was with the oral surgeon: over a half-hour away and already over. So as my mom, (on the dentist’s phone), and the receptionist sweetly tried to sort out all the details, the many mistakes, and reschedule appointments, I clung to composure.  I thought about my missed appointment, being stranded at the dentist, the classes I was missing, the crazy amount of effort put into getting there all for naught, and the three papers I still needed to write (which would no-doubt be the far worse for being written directly after oral-surgery). And I thought about all this as the pain made my head feel a mushy, foggy, bog.

So yes, I had a little mini-melt-down. I stood in the anti-room between the entry doorways and let the tears slowly fall. Like melting ice-cream and so many sweet dreams.

The receptionist had kindly called multiple numbers for me, and a security man was on his way to pick me back up. The same man. I tried to dry my tears before I got in the car.

He was an older gentleman, closer to eighty. His name was Jim. As we drove through the little town we passed by a nondescript collection of running water and some small houses by its bank.

“That’s where me and my wife lived.” he commented, almost to himself, like he couldn’t help saying so in passing by.

I recollected myself and presently asked, “Have you always lived here?”

“My whole life.” he replied. “Well,” he said, “I used to live in Jackson.” Jackson was the town next-door. As someone who’s moved seven times, once across the continent, this didn’t seem to really count (but I didn’t tell him so). “But I didn’t like it,” he continued. “Here I know all the fishing and hunting spots.”

“Was your wife from here, too?”

Yes, she was, he said. Silently I wondered if she had passed away but at last asked, “Did you go to school together?”

The answer was yes, but he said it like there’d been a barrier, “Weeeellll, I was two years ahead of her.”

I smiled and replied, grinning, “My boyfriend’s two years older than me, and I think it works.”

He laughed quietly. “Yesss,” he mused, “it all worked out pretty good.”

The way he said it, it wasn’t about going to school with his wife, it was his whole long, beautiful life he was thinking about.

And that made me think. Perspective, people. Here was a man who had lived his whole life in the same twenty-five square miles. He’d married a girl he’d gone to school with, lived along the banks of a back-water town-stream, and in his old age worked Security for a college. He’d spent the last few hour of the day jumping college student’s cars and taking me to and fro from the dentist.

And his life was beautiful. And he was a beautiful, kind old man.

My teeth suddenly felt more like a baby-problem. And as the rest of the day passed, and I was comforted by calls from my mother, my boyfriend, and sweet girl-friends who offered rides and post-surgery nursing, I couldn’t help but thinking how blessed I was—and that my own life was pretty beautiful, too.

Kinda crazy. Maybe dark-chocolate and rainbow-flavored. But beautiful.

Illuminations from a Fevered Brain

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fever, fuzzy, God, movies, nurse, prayer, sick, smoothies, sore, temperature, throat

Here’s a random collection of enlightenments that stuck me in the three nights and two-and-a-half days I spent in bed languishing from a fever. Enjoy.

1) You don’t realize how Cocker Spaniel healthy you usually are till you’re marsh-wiggle-miserable and, well, sick as a dog. We aught to be thanking and praising the Lord for our health all the time (which I’ve sadly neglected).

2) Things get really fuzzy when you’re sick—and when the fog lifts you’re like, Oooh, look, light! dust! and the bed-sheets are made of these tiny things called threads…

3) It’s true about ice-cream (or smoothies in my case) working wonders for the throat. Tea with honey is amazing too (and I practically lived on some amazing chicken soup from bone-broth my mum made) but as an exciting alternative fruit smoothies are the way to go! Throw some blueberries in the blender with some milk and yogurt and you get a throat-numbing, sweet-heaven dose of anti-oxidants and good bacteria.

4) You look better when you’re sick. At least to yourself. I don’t mean when you have a cold—not the bleary-eyed, red-nosed type of sick but the feverish sick. You’re brain-damaged. And you’re sweating so your skin takes on this glow and you look in the mirror and you see this mirage and you’re like, “Wow, I don’t look so bad for being sick.” (As soon as the fever left, though, I looked in the mirror and was like, nooo, nope, you look really bad.)

5) When you have a fever, taking your own temperature every 25 minutes is highly amusing. The drama of watching your own temperature rise just might be the only amusement your brain can take because…

6) Sadly, when you’re very sick movies scarcely work to take your mind (what’s left of it) off of your misery. I tried my usual thrillers to no avail. Except in the happier moments of medication they were all just too much for my battle-fraught brain to buffer. Like I said to my Dad when he asked what I wanted to watch: “Something happy. Not too complicated. No violence.” (In other words: Keep it simple, keep it safe.)

7) We love your spontaneous tea-refills and pillow-puffings. But hazard questions at your own peril. Because it will take 30 seconds to make up one’s mind to answer, another 30 to decide what to answer, and then another 30 to get it out from a fever-bashed vocabulary and a very, very, very sore throat.

8) Sick people listen up: just because you have nothing else to think about except when you’ll see your mummy next doesn’t mean she’s on temporary-leave and abandoning the home-front. Chances are she’s visited you in your sleep aaand if you checked the clock you’d discover that despite the fact that it feeels like it’s been hoursss since you’ve seen anybody’s face, anything exciting has happened, or even your temperature has gone up by even 0.1 degrees—it’s really only been minutes.

9) There are some great male nurses out there, and hats off to my dad and brothers for checking up on me and offering to do anything to make me feel better—but there’s nothing like a woman in a sick-room. Shout-out to my amazing Mom and nurse-of-a-little-sister.

10) One of the things my Mom prayed was that my time in bed would be “profitable.” That really struck me because usually the first thing we think of when we’re sick or insomniatic is that we (or that time) are somehow useless. But in a sermon I listened to I was reminded how whenever we feel “thirsty” or “hungry”—that’s God calling out to us to run to Him—and to drink of the Living Water that will satisfy. So while feverishness didn’t go very well with trying to pray, I was definitely reminded of how in all those quiet, in-between moments—the dead time in-between two appointments, that unexpected 2AM wakefulness—that’s a good time to pray. Meet with God: thank Him, praise Him, intercede for a friend, or just drink deeply and delight in the One who loves you most.

The End Is Near

Tags

NaNoWriMo, school, The Hobbit

THE END IS NEAR!!!

That was supposed to sound exultant, not ominous. I can’t wait till the month is over.

Trust me, I haven’t anything in particular against November–I’m just really excited it’s almost December.

Because when December strikes–I won’t have to nanowrimo anymore. My novel will be over–fini! compléter!

The finish line is in sight. THE END IS NEAR!!! Just 4,000 words remain to be written. I can do this thing. 

A lot of people will be happy when I’m finished. My boyfriend will be glad I’m getting more sleep and rest. I’LL be happy I’m sleeping more too–and glad to not have to slime five pages a day with my tortured, sleepy sentences. My brothers will be happy, as well. Having both read the book they’ve started watching Pride & Prejudice (the 5+ hour version. the GOOD version) and are waiting for me–and when I’m free in the evening–to watch them together.

December brings the end of school, also. I might die before then–I have two weeks of straight exams, several lab reports, and a paper. But I’ll be super glad to kiss my classes good-bye.

December brings the end of the year. Two-thousand and thirteen here-we-come.

Oh, and speaking of the end–the Mayan’s calender ends, too–which just might mean the end of the world.

Or, if we interpret the calender my favorite way, The Hobbit IS FINALLY COMING TO THEATERS!!!

Bag End Here We Come.

Ich Liebe Dich!

Tags

German, life, love

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