The High Season

By all accounts if "cozy" were an actual destination, December 18th would be its high season. This is when cozy does its best work. Short days, cold weather (if you're lucky to live somewhere that doesn't rely upon fronts to provide you with this ingredient), snow (if you're extra lucky to live somewhere that gets dumped upon with THIS ingredient), steaming pots of chili, wool sweaters and fleece, crackling fireplaces, well you get the idea. I love this time of year but not for the reasons most people do. Sure, I'm a sucker for the holidays...I love the festive nature of the season with parties and good cheer; preferably the type of "cheer" that comes in a bottle. I love Christmas trees, Christmas smells, infinite servings of food, dressing up for parties, colorful parcels with long coils of ribbon, and being with my friends and my family. But truth be told, I'd be a sucker for this time of year if Christmas fell in July. I love Autumn and am downright giddy with anticipation of its arrival. Each year, however, I forget how much I relish Winter.

I love where I live but I must confess that I am complete crab when I wake up in Mid-December and realize that, once again, I need to leave behind my winter coat when I leave the house because the temperature is scheduled to spike to a creepy 78 degrees. I also must confess that the idea of spending Christmas in any sort of tropical climate incites a protest from within. Some people swear by it, but it simply isn't for me. I'm a purist and as a result, I adhere to a strict regimen of seasonally appropriate weather. To date, I have been unsuccessful in finding a way to live in Texas AND the North East; spending the months of October through February in the North East, of course. I'm working on it, but for now, the best I can do is have a perpetual pot of chili on my stove commencing in October, crank the a.c. when the elements refuse to comply with the calendar, layer in my fleece, dim the lights, close the blinds, light candles, and hunker down with my puppy. This is the cozy high season, after all.