Day 24: Nature ups the ante (and lowers the temperature)

I just checked the temperature on my phone.

I couldn’t help but react audibly when I saw it.  I’m not sure whether I made a gasp or a moan or a strangulated whimper.  Whatever sound I made, it was in reaction to seeing this:

1°

Oh, my.

Well, here’s one way to tell THIS story. Going out this morning  will be an interesting test of what it will be like for me — the day after I wrote in this blog about how extreme weather affects my sense of safety (and when I’m still not back to baseline, health-wise).

I think writing about the extreme cold and my sense of safety yesterday is already helping. Just writing or talking about something — sharing a story, especially a previously unexpressed one — can help quite a bit, I believe. (I guess it’s good I believe that, since that’s the backbone of what I do for a living.)

And it’s also helping this morning, to share my reactions in today’s post — especially that initial, primal THUMP of dismay I felt when I saw that tiny digit on my phone.

It’s a ONE, for heaven’s sake. ONE degree.

Here it is again, in all its small starkness:

1°

(I keep thinking that some of you who are reading this, perhaps living closer to one of the Earthly Poles than I do and regularly experiencing colder temperatures, might be chuckling at my delicate whussy-ness right now, but Hey!  I think we can all bear more easily whatever we’re used to.)

So, as I was saying, it’s a ONE.  Just a smidge away from a zero.  Zero. Nothing.  (Fahrenheit, the crueler measurement of cold.)

So, yes, that scares me.  This is a situation where the  smallness of the number is bad. I’m not talking golf, blood pressure, or “bad” cholesterol,  where smaller numbers are reassuring. In this situation, numbers considerably smaller than normal are dangerous — like the realms of salaries, grades, and the heart rate of a child.

So it’s more dangerous out there, dear readers.   But as I said earlier in this post, writing about this, sharing this with you, feeling not-alone with this, is helpful, especially as I’m gearing myself up to go out and meet it.

And as I’m preparing myself right now, about to put on my layers of armor and venture into The Land of One Degree, I’m feeling …..

Like a hero, actually.

Really. (And I guess that showed up in my language, directly above.)

And rather than feeling beaten down — as I did when that fearsome  and shocking 1° popped up on my cell phone — I actually can feel a sense of excitement.

Really!

And here are some things I’m believing right now:

I can do it.

I will be okay.

Even better!

I will pass through this, triumphant.

I will beat this dastardly degree!

I mean, it’s only a puny little ONE, for heaven’s sake.

Ta-da!