My Nose Hairs Are Freezing!

Some of you might think that "My Nose Hairs Are Freezing!" is just the title to this post. There's no way I'd write an entire post literally about freezing nose hairs, right? Wrong. For those of you who have not been privy to my blogs on Myspace, it is time for my annual I-hate-the-cold-why-did-I-ever-move-here rant. Minnesota has been experiencing subzero temperatures lately, and for those of you who have never experienced such cold, let me enlighten you as to what you are missing:

First of all, when the temperature falls below zero, the cold sucks some of the oxygen out of the air, leaving you feeling like you are out of breath the second you step outside. This feeling lasts for the entire duration of your time out of doors. Secondly, if there is any moisture in your nose, which there will be because in cold this severe you will all be sick, your nose hairs will freeze and stick either to each other or to the side of your nose immediately upon contact with the Siberian air Mother Nature has foisted on you. Not only will this result in the further impediment of any attempts to draw breath, it will also mercilessly and without ceasing create the sensation of your nose being tickled, making you want to continuously scratch it, which you are unfortunately unable to do because your hands are buried deep inside gloves which are buried deep inside mittens so that your fingers will not get frostbite and fall off in the time it takes you to get to your car, office, house, or wherever you have unwisely chosen to go in such circumstances, and, because your hands are thusly buried, levels of optimum nose scratching are unable to be obtained. This means that you are also stuck with this tortuous sensation until you are able to get someplace warm and your nose hairs have a chance to thaw.

All this happens in the first second of being exposed to subzero temperatures. (I'm not kidding.) In the second second (did you follow me?), you will usually realize that it is also extremely windy, and the wind is resulting in a further reduction of the temperature by at least 20 degrees. You will try to hunker down as far as you can go into the outermost coat you are wearing (because you will be wearing more than one), all while pulling up whatever loose material is available to cover any skin you foolishly left exposed and trying to hold your coat closed (if the buttons don't extend all the way to the very bottom hem, which they won't) to trap in as much heat as possible. Once you have done this, you are now ready to start walking toward wherever it is you are going, and you realize that rather than running as fast as you can to get out of the cold as soon as remotely possible, that the cold air has frozen any moisture that happened to be on the ground before Jack Frost blew into your region, and since this is Minnesota, the moisture that is on the ground just happens to be a foot and a half of snow, which is now one big block of ice. You must tippy-toe as carefully as possible to avoid slipping on the ice, breaking your leg, and having to lie out in the cold for hours until someone hears your cries of help and comes to rescue you. If your destination is to your garage to retrieve your car, upon arrival you will realize after painstakingly traveling the ice terrain that used to be your driveway that the automatic garage door froze mid-opening, and you now have to release your grasp on your coat, thereby exposing some skin to the harshness of the elements, and proceed to manually lift the stupid door the rest of the way. Then you have to get in your car, which, if you're lucky, might be a few degrees warmer than the air temperature, spend five minutes trying to convince the car that it isn't too cold to start, and another 10 minutes waiting for the car to warm up so that you can actually drive it, back the car out of the garage, jump back out in the frigid air and manually close the stupid garage door, all while being careful not to lock yourself out of your car in your haste. However, if your journey is long enough, you might actually get a chance to warm up before having to repeat the process all over again.

One note to all of this: it is important to remember to blow dry your hair, as if it is in the least bit still damp from washing when you step outside, it will freeze, just like your nose hairs.

I can't believe there's still at least two more months left of winter. On the bright side, it warmed up to 7 degrees today.