Curiouser and Curiouser…

I have a problem with winter. That is to say I don’t know how to dress for it, even with my Connecticut Christmas background. Back in sixth grade I preferred the snooze button to the blow dryer. I waited for the bus at the end of a very long hill and my wet head would freeze into stiff dreads in the wind. I also thought it was cool not to have a coat and to jump out the door unbeknownst to my parents just in my hot-pink Champion sweatshirts, which I assure you were really slick at the time, and leggings. Hey, it was the early nineties. No one said it was pretty.

Today I saw on the morning news that it was forty degrees in the city. I argued to myself that I would spend a total of fourteen minutes outside, tops, in my work outfit jumping from my apartment to the subway to the office and back. I wore a skirt, bare legs and optimism (I’m with Anna Wintour on hose, I’m more comfortable sans, ever since the day I grew out of white tights and a corduroy jumper).

Let me stress that this seemed like a good idea because in the morning I’m in a bit of stupor, everything in the house keeps soporific. My room is a warm little jewel box of pink and blue blankets and antique lamps and does not adequately prepare me for the harsh reality of the outside world. Since I did not want to stumble to work in heels, but rather make the switch once in the lobby, I slipped them in my tote and went, in flip flops, to the train, reading Word Power Made Easy, mouthing aloud “philanderer” as the instructions of the GRE-sanctioned book insist.

On the subway, in the winter, I fit right in…and so the question remains…where is my barometer of normalcy when it’s so hard to elicit stares? I’m a bag lady-in-making, I can see it now…I just need to start accumulating cats and then I’ll be on my way…muttering, ill-dressed and late as always...