cheated ... or something

It got warm this week. Deceptively, deliciously, wonderfully warm.

Something about wearing a spring-green skirt or a short-sleeved dress and heels felt so happily out of place, so fantastically bizarre that I lived in a three-day state of denial that it's January, and January in Wyoming is rarely - if ever - kind to cold-fearing bodies.

And then Winter came back today, with its sullen gray skies, its snow/rain/sleet/ice, its wind ... and its c-c-cold.

And it's not a typical, dry Wyoming cold. It's not the kind of arctic wind that slaps your face red and chapped and leaves it at that. Oh, no. There's some moisture in the air tonight, so the cold has that piercing quality to it - it has developed icy claws that tear through your pathetic layers of clothing and grip your skin in a chilly vice; it doesn't stop at making your nose red and runny - it flows into your lungs, leaving you certain that your chest now houses two lung-shaped blocks of ice.

And yet ... your nose still runs. Of course.

I want my springy January back.