Learning curve

Scratch that. I spoke too soon.

I should’ve  never boasted about being well on the way to knowing how to dress appropriately for my new, colder habitat. I decidedly do not know how to dress for going out. As in, to bars and pubs and other fine watering holes.

Apparently Wisconson-ites have thicker blood and weatherized cold-resistant skin, because I was most certainly the only person sporting a parka, a monstrously-thick scarf and gloves to the bars last night. Oops.

Somehow, even though temps were in the low 20s (Don’t tell me that’s not cold; that’s well below freezing!), all the other female bar patrons still managed to look super cute in their high-heeled boots, shiny tops and light (Light, I tell you.) jackets. How do they do it??

I mean, sure, it was warm inside the bar — if not for the central heat, then certainly for the crush of bodies and, well, the beer and liquor don’t hurt either.

But outside! Well, outside was another story. The cold just hangs there like  a blanket of invisible tiny, tingly, pointy needles jabbing at your skin. How do you walk from bar to bar without freezing half to death?? I think the answer might be simple: Perhaps I wasn’t drinking enough. Maybe all the stylishly-attired young women out and about were actually quite intoxicated, but in Wisconsin they’ve since evolved so that the tell-tale loud, obnoxious speech and bleary eyes of drunkenness no longer are outwardly visible.

I want to be like them!

I guess I probably shouldn’t tell people I was wearing long underwear beneath my blue jeans last night. That’s certainly not going to get me any Wisconsin winter cred.