Winter begins, and it sucks
This morning's snow was just the smallest sample, I realize, but I get the feeling that I'm going to hate winter if I have to spend all of it stuck in Michelle's body.

It won't necessarily be the cold - women actually can handle that better than men. One's heart doesn't have to work so hard to circulate warm blood around a smaller body, and though hair length isn't really a sex thing, I have to say I liked having it cover my ears while waiting for the T. And you know how those percent-body-fat charts that the government puts out says that a healthy woman will have a greater proportion of their body bass be fatty tissue than a healthy man? Sure, a good chunk of that is in the breasts (more for some of us than others), but the rest is insulation. The cold still sucks, but it's incrementally more bearable.

But, man, the wind! Even in my new winter coat, I feel like I'm light enough to be picked up and blown away. The shoes I wore didn't help; despite a big, chunky heel (basically an inch-and-a-half cube of rubber at the back of each foot), I still felt like I had only the slightest toe-hold on the ground, especially if the wind was behind me. And my purse! I'd left the zipper undone, and the thing was almost whipped away from me; I guess a wallet, magzine, lipstick and tampons aren't enough to keep it weighted down. No wonder women always seemed to keep so much extra shit in there.

I also swear I could feel the salt on the sidewalk eating away at my pants. They use some real industrial-strength salt on Boston's sidewalks (it's not uncommon to look down and see a pellet with a circle of clear space around it, like it's melting snow and ice just by being near it), and these thin, butt-hugging pants just seem like they wouldn't be as strong as men's denim or khakis.

I could be worse, though - at least the T was running on time, for the most part. Apparently, traffic was awful outside the city; Lizzy didn't get to work until almost noon, for instance, and even before her, people were just trickling in.

Actually, I'll be honest - I hate winter, period. Being in Michelle's body just means that the ways it's a pain in the ass are new and different.

-Marti

- posted 7:16 PM - - (archive use only)