Your mom was right!

Yesterday, our high temperature was 19 degrees.  It was also the day that I chose to do the "Angel Tree" with CJ.  This was our 15th year - he was 2 months old the first year.

As we were getting dressed in the morning, I stressed the importance of layers.  I told him that it was important to dress, not for the mall, not for the car, not for the restaurant, but for the 4 hours that you were stuck in the cold waiting for help to come when your car broke down or you were in an accident or they closed the roads.

He gave me the look.  Y'all know the look, especially those of you who are around teenagers at all.

I got dressed.  I put on my knee high socks and my panties.  I put on my thermal long johns and pulled my CuddleDuds top down over them.  I put on my pants and then my long sleeved shirt.  I topped all of this off with a vest.  I was toasty.

We shopped and, in the mall, I shed the vest.  I was a little more than comfortable most of the time that I was indoors and just less than comfortable when I was out in the -2 degree windchill.

We finished our shopping, met up with his mom, had lunch together and took the child home.  I was driving my child back to her vehicle so she could go to work when I related to her my earlier conversation with her child.  She agreed with me completely, adding the peanut butter and cat litter to the list of winter necessities for any vehicle.  We discussed the fact that, when stranded, you cannot count on your vehicle's heater because you will either run out of gas or, if in snow drifts, will carbon monoxide yourself to death.

We got to the mall, she got in her vehicle and I continued on my way.

Fast forward about an hour.  My phone rang and it was Julie, laughing, waiting in the cold on the side of the highway for the tow truck to come.  She had a flat tire, got out to change the flat and discovered that her new (to her) pickup had no spare!  She was laughing, though, because she was, although stranded and about to be late to work and about to be several hundred dollars poorer, warm.  She was warm.