Nine reasons why the cold wave that grips San Miguel doesn't bother me that much

To hear folks in San Miguel groan and kvetch about the cold snap during the past several days you'd think we were at the dawn of a new Ice Age.

Our cleaning lady showed up Monday seemingly mummified under numerous layers one of which might have been a blanket.

The follicly challenged visiting minister at our church last Sunday wrapped his head with a scarf and shivered while waiting for the service to begin. He and his wife live in Tacoma but San Miguel's cold seemed to get to them.

I'll have none of that. As a matter of fact, I'm rather enjoying the coldish snap we've been having which has brought overnight temperatures down to only 27 degrees F.  For Canadians that's probably downright balmy.

Reason #1: Colder temperatures make our morning walks, about two and a half miles, brisker and a better exercise. So brisk was our walk yesterday that even our dogs were dragging, begging to go home already.

Reason #2: We get the chance to have lunch on our tiny table in the front patio, which we don't use during the summer because it's too hot out there.

Buen provecho.

Reason #3:  We get to drive forty five minutes with our friend Ron to the town of Adjuntas del Río, where the main industry is making mesquite furniture, and where they'll sell you a pickup-full of scrap mesquite for firewood for about $20 dollars.

Wintertime entertainment for $20 dollars. 

For any environmental hypochondriacs out there who might be wondering if the wood was harvested responsibly, using ecologically sustainable or renewable methods, I can only say,  "In Mexico? Yeah. Sure."

After picking up the wood the three of us went on for lunch to Dolores Hidalgo to fill up on pork carnitas wrapped in corn tortillas and condimented with chopped onions, parsley and a hot sauce, a  gastronomic pile-up the Mexican Dietetic Association considers the epitome of well balanced meal, especially if you wash it down with a beer or two.

Reason #4: At the end of the day we don't have to go out looking for our cat Fifo. With this cold weather Fifo is finished with his rounds and back at the kitchen door by noon.

When it gets cold, it's better inside.

Reason #5: We get to light up our fireplace, which on a cold winter night becomes the centerpiece of our home, particularly during Christmas.

That's when Stew decorates the mantle with lights wrapped around a cardboard crèche his parents bought at a Woolworth's in Cedar Rapids, Iowa about sixty years ago, and which he has carried around since, along with three cement gnomes which are planted in our front patio.

Christmas and a wood fire. 

Some of the plaster figures in the crèche still have prices, ranging from five to ten cents. The population of the crèche increases yearly and now includes some sheep made of sugar (from Mexico's Day of the Dead) and an outsize Christmas ornament in the shape of a beagle.

Reason #6: The cold weather makes us grateful for all the time we spent designing and building a "green" house that includes, among other features, adobe insulation, skylights and large south-facing windows that let in the sun to help warm the interior.

Our large east-facing window in the bedroom awakens us with views of the sunrise over the mountains and reminds us that no matter how cold it gets here, at least we have nearly constant sun as opposed to the wintry penumbra that makes people up north seriously consider jumping out a fifth-story window in February.

Reason #7: We bring some of our succulents and cacti inside where we get to admire anew their amazingly weird beauty.

Vacationing succulents. 

Reason #8: The cold snap might finish off the damn grasshoppers before they eat up everything in the yard.

Here's hoping for the end of the grasshoppers
which seem to be getting bigger. 

Reason #9: The best reason came this morning when we read that Roy Moore, devoted Christian and child molester, had been defeated in Alabama. That gave the Sleazeball-in-Chief  and his former sidekick and freelance saboteur Stephen K. Bannon, a richly deserved poke in the eye.

Merry Christmas, Roy. 

That news made me feel warm all over, no matter how cold it is outside.

I'm really psyched to celebrate Christmas now.

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