Top Five: Reasons I Hate Winter

It’s no secret that I dislike winter. As we’re (hopefully) beginning to emerge from the cold temperatures and unfashionable warm clothing, I’ve decided to write up a list to complain about the ones I dislike the most.

The Weather Rollercoaster
Living in Florida, we never have a winter that has stable temperatures. We fluctuate from one extreme to the other, especially when we’re coming out of the winter and heading into spring. We’ll sit pretty at 80 degrees for a few days, just long enough to fool us all into putting out winter clothes away. As suddenly as those warm temperatures came, it will rain while we’re all asleep, and we wake up to highs in the 40s. Then we all call out sick while we dig out coats out of the closets. Speaking of coats:

Uncomfortable and Unfashionable Winter Clothes
I’m a little picky about what I wear. I don’t like anything that covers my arms or legs. I don’t like hoodies, because they look sloppy. I don’t like shoes that aren’t flip-flops. Winter makes me put away everything I do like wearing — shorts, tank tops, flip-flops — and makes me wear these de-feminizing jeans and hoodies and sneakers. I end up wearing t-shirts and hoodies all the time, and it doesn’t feel cute. It feels lazy. Add that to my grown-out pixie that looks like high school boy hair, and I just look like a fat dude on his way to Taco Bell.

Daylight Wasting Time
The day our clocks fall back is the beginning of the worst part of the year. I never really get used to it. I know some people criticize Daylight Saving Time for manipulating the time and declaring it obsolete, but I love it. I love having that extra daylight; I love that it doesn’t get dark until 8:30 in the middle of the summer. It feels natural to have those long days. When the clock rolls back in November, I never fully get used to it. When it’s dark at 6 PM, it feels much later than 6 PM, and I spend the rest of the night feeling like I should go to bed, but it’s too early. The absence of sunlight in these autumn and winter months doesn’t do anyone any favors.

Nasty Seasonal Beers
Winter beers are the ones I like the least. I’ll still drink them, because I can’t turn my back to a beer, but I think the worst things I’ve ever put in my mouth have been holiday beers. Maybe this isn’t entirely true, there are some I like; I’m actually drinking a Sierra Nevada Celebration as I write this. Those ones that taste like gingerbread and spices? No. No. Those never should have existed.

The Winter One-Uppers
No matter how cold it is where you live, there’s always someone who lives somewhere colder. How do you know who these people are? They’ll freaking tell you. As a Floridian, I know that what’s freezing cold to me might be just chilly, crisp, or even balmy to someone else, but I don’t think that should negate my discomfort. The reason I’m complaining about being cold in the first place is because I’m uncomfortable. Surely anyone living in a different climate with much lower temperatures can relate to my being cold, so why can’t we just agree to be cold? This does not apply to anyone north of the US/Canada border. You guys can one-up me all you want. You deserve it.

The bottom line is I just want it to be summer now. Please let it be summer now.