Happy Groundhog Day!

I don't know if you heard, but it has been cold here. And I don't know why I'm whining about it, it is Winnipeg for goodness sakes! I'm supposed to be part of a hardy tribe that laughs into gusts of the windchill.

Not this year, I've become the ultimate Winnipeg wimp. You see, we have been spoiled the last two winters with above normal temperatures. Last year, I was outside at a park on Christmas Day snapping pictures without gloves. I know, crazy-ness!

This year I'm feeling blue. I miss the above average winter temperatures. I do not enjoy wearing ski pants and scrapping attempting to scrap the thick frost off my windshield at six in the morning. I'm not even loving sweater wearing season. It is a tough winter, I tell you.

Never mind the fact that I feel unfashionable. Russell Smith, Canadian writer and cultural commentator, last week in his Globe and Mail column said, "when it's 20 below, I stop being a fashion critic altogether."

A fine example of fashions that would not cut it in
 a Winnipeg Winter but that you might actually see... 

I think everyone in Winnipeg stops thinking about fashion when it hits minus 20. Well, almost everyone. Emergency rooms were reporting an increase of frost bite cases. My heart sank as I thought about homeless people battling the frigid temperatures. I was wrong, sort of. Sadly there are people out there that do not have adequate shelter but there are also those that do and yet still suffer frostbite injuries, teenagers.

I was one of them. It is breaking my heart when I catch my nephew out there in the frigid temperatures in his running shoes. Oh the things we they do for fashion. I'm older and hopefully a wee bit wiser now.

As a teenager, I was never allowed to go outside in the winter without boots. But like most kids what you're wearing during the day is not necessarily what you left the house wearing. It was the seventies, track shoes were all the rage. And damn, they were comfortable, fashionable and less clunky than winter boots. Lets just fast forward to the scene at the bus stop, waiting and waiting while frost bite settled in my running shoes. Damn, I was cool. Just not the kind of cool I wanted to be. Frostbite is painful. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

I learned the hard way that Winnipeg winters can be harsh. I lesson that my teenage self had to learn the hard way. My older and hopefully a wee bit wiser self has come to accept that I rather be warm than fashionable. I don't consider myself a superstitious person but I have to tell you I did seek out the wisdom of a little rodent this morning.

Yes, that little groundhog popping up to let us know if we have six more weeks of unfashionable fashions to wear or can I start sewing a spring jacket?

Oh no, conflicting reports! Well, I just going to have go with the groundhog that didn't see his shadow because I really would rather sew a new spring jacket than that winter coat.

Happy Groundhog's Day and Happy Sewing!