Contrasts in cold

Today is my favorite kind of weather. It's grey, windy, cold, and for the first time all season, I saw a couple of snowflakes flurry around. The leaves are mostly gone from the trees now too, creating a bleak, flat, and to me, wonderful landscape. I feel like a too-long dormant seed who has finally sprouted and come to life.

I'm a fall/winter child. I'm an ice baby. I'm frigid, frosty, frozen (but not flaky). I love the cold the way some people love warm, sandy beaches. I love the wind, the sleet, the ice, the biting cold that leaves your fingers numb, your toes chilled and your nose dripping. I love the things that come with that - the hot mulled cider (highly alcoholic, of course), Thanksgiving, Christmas, roast goose with chestnut stuffing, gingerbread lattes from Starbucks, pumpkin pie, hot mugs of cocoa with popcorn while curled up in front of a good movie (ideally with someone curled up next to you) under a blanket.

I love the cold so that I can love the warm - that feeling when you come inside after a long winter walk, and feel your extremities come back to life. I don't hate being warm. I just love contrasts and extremes in every aspect of life and there is nothing more wonderfully cozy and hopeful than the contrast of a warm room with a roaring fire with the cold, blustery, grey outdoors.