One Month Of Summer

The weather in Poughkeepsie, NY (approx. 1 hr north of NYC) is typical northeast fare. Humid summers, but not too hot; crisp fall air changing the leaves beautiful colors; cold winters with occasional snow storms; and then finally the gorgeous spring flowers.

I never was a skier, but I did enjoy the winter weather. If anything, it was a welcome break from the humid summers that I hated. Plus, I had a saying: When it's cold, you can add as many layers of clothing as you need. But when it's hot, you can only take so much off.

When we got word that IBM was moving us to Vermont, I was pleased. I loved the winter, right? What could be better?

Slitting my wrists, that's what could have been better.

The winters in Vermont were long, harsh, long, bitter, and did I say long? Summers were incredibly short and extremely mild. I'm not kidding, the month of July was "summer". Fall was beautiful, but damn, it started in freakin' August. And the spring was known as "mud season". How nice.

Once we moved up there, my health seemed to deteriorate at a much quicker pace than it had in NY. I'm not sure why... dunno if it was the cold weather or the fact that our first apartment's only bathroom was on the second floor (howze that for brilliant planning?). All I knew was that I needed to move someplace warm soon.

It was in Vermont that a neurologist determined that the interior core temperature of my legs was lower than it should be. In a sense, my legs were acting as big radiators, sucking the heat out from the rest of my body. I was freezing even when the temperature wasn't really that cold. All fall, winter and spring I wore silk long underwear and wool socks. I even wore finger-less gloves when working on the computer. I was freaking cold.

We fought hard to move to Austin, Texas. It took two years to finally get a transfer and have IBM pay for our moving expenses. We had to sell our house about a year before we moved. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment with two dogs and all our boxes because IBM would not pay these expenses if we were moving from a house. But we finally got out of that hell-hole in the North Country.

So, when it's 105 degrees in Austin, you WILL NOT hear me complaining.
Ever.


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