Shiver for me, girl.

The last bit I wrote on here was about the October snow, and it hasn't snowed since.

Somewhere between my delight in that freak blizzard and the way the breath caught in my throat last week when my LaGuardia-to-O'Hare flight dipped beneath the clouds to unveil the frozen city on the lake, silvery-pale and glittering in the icy-thin sunlight, is where I unearthed a very tiny, very insignificant but altogether real nugget of wisdom about myself.

I like the cold.

I just knew, right there at the airport. No matter how many times I've denied it, it's been there the whole time, trapped under my skin like a speck of sand, like a pea under the umpteenth mattress. It had worried itself into a pearl, a Great Truth that I never knew existed prior to that very moment. I stepped through that revolving door, luggage in hand, felt the wind pierce my wimpy jacket and I just KNEW, as easy as breathing.

I like the cold.

I like the winter and the snow. I do! I'm going to say it like an affirmation, because I'm excited to know myself a little bit better. I like the cold!

I like it to the extent that I experienced a very defined sinking feeling in my chest this morning when the weatherman said it was to be "back up in the mid-forties by mid-day."

New York never feels clean to me, except in wintertime. It's the smell that the clear, dry cold brings, the way it stings your nostrils and punches you in the gut as you suck it deep into your whimpering, shriveling lungs in slow, controlled breaths. It doesn't smell like garbage, urine, or burnt halal, it smells like crisp, clean, perfect snow and silence. And it makes me forget about all the resentment I harbor for the city when it roils, putrid, in the unwavering heat and suffocating humidity of summer.

I don't know what this bit of enlightenment means for me, Sir and the locations of our future, but I know that right in this very minute, it means I'm growing all the more impatient for a real winter and some goddamn snow.

When will it snow, New York? Why do you torment me with weird mild winter weather and lingering humidity? WHY?

Christmas is over, but Santa, if you could please bring winter to NYC, I'll be waiting for you. I'll be the one with all the scarves.