While people in the northern part of the United States were shivering in their fur-lined boots last night, we in Florida were whining about how freezing it was...at 57 degrees. That's right. We're wimptastic.

I say this not to brag to those less temperately fortunate, or even to implant in winter-dimmed brains those visions of palm trees and blue skies and oranges hanging in lush baubles off the trees, though all those things exist fewer than fifteen feet from where I'm sitting. Though I love the fact that we have flowers outside all year round--the azaleas are all up in their delicate bloom just now--I, daughter of frigid upstate New York, would trade weather patterns in a heartbeat.

There's something to be said about hibernation--life shutting down, drawing in, only to burst forth with wild lushness in the spring--that is sadly missing here. Spring comes in wanly, hardly recognizable from winter. There's yet another humdrum sunny day. And then, overnight, it's summer: we're frying, and have to draw our drapes and lie, naked, under the air conditioning just to retain some fluids. It's what my splendid word-of-the-day program taught me was called "estivation," or "aestivation"--the opposite of hibernation.

Frankly, it's boring. And I'd rather be cold than hot--with cold, you have duvets and hot toddies and roaring fires and woolen mittens and scarves and Uggs and skiing. Plus, everybody looks good in sweaters. Double plus: there's chili.

And one of my most productive times ever was a long, dark Wisconsin winter, where we were forced inside by the whipping wind and the air so cold it froze our nose-hairs. In comparison, when you're whinging naked under a fan in the dark, you hardly want to work at all, for sweating.

So I envy all you cold people right now. Think with pity of all we reptilian-blooded Florida folk who don't know how to think when we can't wear short sleeves, and turn on our (fake gas) fires when it dips below sixty.