More Votes for Florida

It was so cold this morning that I cringed when my pants touched my legs. I don’t usually think of my legs as bare when I have pants on, but below 10° Fahrenheit, skin touching fabric leaves me with the understanding that under my clothes I am, indeed, naked.

I could wear long underpants but most places are so overheated that I fear spontaneous combustion. A piff and all that would be left is a puddle of ashes on a café chair, obliterated like one of Spinal Tap’s drummers. Besides, I’m outside for just beyond a nanosecond as I do my duck speed walk across the icy sidewalk to the car. Oooh aahh, oooh aahh as my skin brushes my suddenly cryogenic khakis. Honestly, if we’re going to have cold, I’d rather have snow. Somehow the white flakes seem jolly whereas the bright bracing empty air feels stark and painful; a cold bath in a steel tub.

In Wisconsin, preferring the white stuff is an unpopular attitude in light of the Sisyphean snowball of last winter. We got – we shoveled – 8 feet of snow last year. That’s 96 inches, some of it wet, sloppy, icy, moved from the sidewalk to the increasingly tall side-of-the-sidewalk snow mound. All in all there were 50 shovelable events, sometimes two or three a day.

Florida.

When I think of Florida I conjure up the image of a Bugs Bunny episode in which Bugs, for a reason I can’t recall, hunkers down on a rudimentary map of the US, cuts Florida off with a handsaw and finishes the task by kicking it free to float into the Gulf, just flicking it away like a giant hanging chad. I have no idea what Bug’s beef was with Florida back in the 50’s, but here at the turn of the century, I think of conniving republicans , the false reality of Disney Land, yahoos in the bayous, and Miami Vice. Just plain Loony Tunes.

But today, as the car thermometer registers 8°, I cast my vote for Florida. Sweet William votes for Florida (but he always does). Gracie, a dog with so little fur she is almost nude and hates her coat, absolutely votes for Florida. Taiko doesn’t care either way, as long as she gets plenty of snacks so Gracie tricks her into going outside and then votes for her by proxy. Even Sara, the Midwestern stoic, says ‘yay’ to the warmth of Florida.

So are we going to pack up and head south? If we did, I’d bet the farm we’d be heading back this way come July. Maybe we’ll just crank up the furnace and watch Miami Vice reruns tonight.