Remember, remember the cold November weather

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November – the penultimate month of the year and the last full month of fall – has finally arrived, which means several things inside our home.

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For one thing, November is my birthday month, so it’s a time of monumental celebration, incredible gift-receiving, and endless, uninterrupted partying, much like in this painting from Belshazzar’s Feast if it took place in a bowling. Or at least it used to be.

Unfortunately, as I got older, my birthday celebrations muted considerably from their “peak” in my late teens and early twenties. My birthday is a much more placid affair these days, usually consisting of a nice dinner at a family-run restaurant chain, receiving eminently practical gifts such as socks, hair clippers for ears and nose, and / or possibly underwear, brutally honest life reviews of my children (my four year old son recently told me, with all the seriousness he could muster “Daddy, every year you get older, your belly gets bigger”) and an early bed if all is well.

November is also a time when we honor the great sacrifices made on our behalf by generations past until Remembrance Day. It’s also a time I remember that, although I’ve worn Remembrance Day poppies every year for my entire life, I have absolutely no idea when it comes to putting these things on without stabbing myself in. repeatedly in new and unique ways. Once a klutz always a klutz I guess.

My wife and I celebrate our anniversary in November, which coincides with the onset of cold and flu season. Most often on our birthday, one of us (usually me, probably for reasons that will be explained later) is in bed as sick as a dog, with a large headboard, a high fever and a disgusting phlegm, lung – a bursting cough that was once described as resembling the agony of a fatally wounded hippo. At least we are walking in the same direction when it comes to all this vow “in sickness and health”.

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And finally, November is the month in which our whole family goes from being in hot weather to our cold, wintery version of life.

No more lawn mower, my beloved hammock, beach towels and our huge assortment of flip flops; and come snow-clearing gear, plentiful sweaters, chunky winter boots and our vast assortment of pavement salts, which keep people from slipping, falling and possibly dying on our soon-to-be-ice-covered walkway. .

Even though I am Canadian and should be used to this annual change, I still find myself eternally in denial that fall turns into winter. It takes me a long time to finally go to “full winter”.

At night I stubbornly continue to sleep with my thin and fragile summer / fall sheet rather than pulling out the much warmer winter duvet, far beyond the point of absurdity, even though I dream of being a character from Call of the Wild and finally waking up shivering and shaking. I continue to convince myself that cold nights are an aberration and I pretend that everything is normal, much like the band playing on the Titanic as it descended into the ocean.

In a related vein, even though the temperatures are starting to drop at a rapid rate, I still wear flimsy jackets and short pants outside, not wanting to recognize the obvious change in seasons. It’s usually when the icicles start to form on my bare legs that I fully realize that the days of shorts are over and the age of parkas and ski pants has finally arrived.

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While it is often said that March comes like a lion and comes out like a lamb, in my own experience it almost always seems that November comes like a sweet little bunny and ends up coming out like a two-headed hydra. The cold November weather – even during relatively mild winters like last year – is still a shock to the system, a wake-up call (or alternatively a call to sleep) for my supposedly ever-expanding mammal body (according to my son). This November is unlikely to be any different.
So if you happen to see a guy (me) on the streets in shorts and a t-shirt in November, maybe you could politely remind him (me) that denial is not just a river in Egypt and throw him a blanket so he won’t be sick in bed on his birthday. Thanks in advance!