thorny weather

The seasons are designed to motivate and stimulate you in certain ways that will accommodate the world in it's turn. For summer, the weather is hot, sticky and forces the clothes and modesty right off of you. In the winter, the weather is bone-chillingly cold and it forces layer upon layer of warmer materials on to your body. Those seasons are pretty easy to figure out and we no longer question our behavior or the goodness of the creators when we think of them. The seasons that require some patience are the spring and the fall. With the temperature jumping from one extreme to another and your wardrobe never fully able to accommodate the dramatic hourly shifts in temperature, you feel uneasy with every wardrobe decision you make. You can start the day in a flannel and heavy jeans, only to have to shift to no shirt and shorts by two in the afternoon and then back to flannel and heavy jeans four hours later. It's troubling. The largest curse of weather is the sex appeal factor. In the summer, when the bodies are on display and well groomed and golden brown, the temperature is too hot for two bodies that are 100 degrees to grapple, however in the winter, when our chilled little bodies are ready to stick together, we are under-groomed and fairly unattractive to look at. Is there a season that is working with us?

Having stored away all of my summer clothes, I am taking a huge gamble on my wardrobe. All of the warm weather gear is packed away and all I have is long sleeves and woolly socks. For the past three weeks my gamble has paid off, then Saturday came and I started losing my shirt, figuratively and literally. The day starts in the 40's and ends in the 40's, but climbs into the 80's for a few hours and when you are working outside, the temperature seems more like it's 110.

There is a great deal to do outside these days. The rest of the round corral has arrived and the chicken coop is looking at it's completion date in the near future. Added to the mix is a need for the garden to be turned for the fall and the firewood to be stacked to insure many a warm night sweating to death in my bed.

In a lot of ways, I envy Heidi and her constant wardrobe. The thick black coat of hair that she wears summer, fall, winter and spring. It's a fashion choice that I wouldn't have gone with, but she seems to like it. As she ages, some of her hair is turning white and her with her joints constantly bothering her and her chewing on them, she has exposed some bare dog skin that can't be comfortable.

I wonder what life would have been like had humans never decided to wear the skins of dead animals. I wonder if we would have been covered with a thick coat of black hair (or red or blonde for those of you genetically inferior). I wonder what that would have done to our modesty issues and if it would have affected how we "size" people up. I'm sure there are those out there that wouldn't know what to do without their wardrobe which is designed to hide their bodies shape. I wonder if the loss of a facade would help them embrace who they are and not hide from it. Do you think that would make them more colorful or would it make them more reclusive?

Perhaps the seasons change to remind us that we are not supposed to get to complacent. Perhaps the seasons make us rethink our comfort levels and force us to add variety to our daily lives. If this is the case, then we should thank mother nature for her patience and guidance. Without her we would all be wearing Bermuda shorts, flip flops and floral pattern short-sleeved shirts everyday. Now how unsexy would that be?