Sometimes I call BS.
Today was one of those days.
My internal thermometer seems to have gotten jarred somewhere around adolescence, because I used to be able to jump into swimming pools and paddle around without shivering, or walk around on sixty-degree days without a jacket. Not anymore. Now, I run cold. Air conditioning, while amazing, is also the invention of someone who really must have hated people who get cold easily, because my body is never more confused than the moments when it's almost as warm as the legendary fires of Hell outside and I go inside to promptly wrap up in a blanket. Or at least, I want to wrap up in a blanket, but you get strange looks if you do that anywhere outside the privacy of your own home during the summer. I much prefer cooler seasons, because at least I'm justified in being cold all the time. I can wear a coat or, you know, a ski parka, and people are like, yeah, it's dang cold, I totally get you. When you complain about being cold in the summer, people give you these weird looks and tell you that you should play outside more.
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| Exhibit A: My boss, AJ, ALWAYS tells me to play outside more. |
Playing outside is swell, but then sometimes the outside decides it wants to possibly kill you, and then when it fails to do that, it decides it wants to make you as miserable as possible.
Today was the first Downtown Farmers' Market of the season, and I work the table with AJ, who owns the Chocolate Conspiracy and is functionally my employer but also one of my very best friends. He's an incredibly good-natured human being who has been an amazing boss (and I work with chocolate, worst job ever right?) and I thoroughly enjoy being in his company, selling chocolate to the sometimes slightly awkward masses of people who frequent places like the Downtown Farmers' Market. Awkwardness aside, the people are actually all quite lovely and it's nearly impossible to be human and not like chocolate, so we do all right.
The Summer Market, though, is supposed to be...what's the word? Right. Summery. In my book, that means hot, obscenely sunny (at least sunny enough to cause me to wear SPF 50 and a giant floppy sunhat. Which, if there had been a Looking Adorable in a Giant Floppy Sunhat competition, chances are I would have won it), and probably sticky. Because hotness means stickiness.
Nope. It was cold. I was dressed fairly conservatively in a maxi skirt and t-shirt, but it was freezing. And our booth is in the shade, so even when it was sunny, it was freezing. The high was 72. 72. In June. Where I'm from, that's nearly unheard of. Even AJ was cold. AJ, who puts the air conditioner on in the chocolate shop and laughs when I retreat to fetch my Grandpa Sweater out of the back room.
I got to the market a bit earlier than my shift and decided that, because it was so cold, I was going to go explore. The logic behind that thinking was that movement would make me warmer, but I hadn't accounted for windchill or cloud cover. I had been to the market the previous year and had noticed a few novelties that I was keen on owning, like mittens, which, you know, are for winter. So I stopped by the Woolies booth, which are these amazing mittens made from old sweaters, and browsed. I saw this gorgeous red pair--red is my favorite color (which for some reason surprises some people) and I knew they had to be mine. They were being handled by another set of people and as soon as they put them down, I grabbed them.
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| MY MITTENS |
I wasn't thinking the chill would last much longer than mid-morning, so I made my way back to my booth, where AJ actually apologized for not warning me to bring a jacket.
I almost wanted to record him saying that on my phone, since it's so rare that AJ shares my feelings about the cold, but I didn't. It won't stop him from teasing me in the future.
I ended up putting my new mittens on, because my fingers were starting to get to the point where they weren't happily performing their duties as my digits, but I kept having to take them off (the mittens, not my fingers) in order to help people and to feed them chocolate sauce. Not feed them by hand, obviously, because that would be creepy and also I would probably not want to work the market if people expected me to feed them by hand.
Seriously. There's no way that's in my job contract. I don't get paid enough to feed strangers by hand. I was taking sauce and putting it on sampling spoons, which is totally different. But that's not something you can really do with mittens on because nobody really wants woolen fuzz in their sauce samples, even if the fuzz came from beautiful handcrafted mittens.
By the way, in case ANYONE was wondering, the answer to "What do I do with this chocolate sauce?" is WHATEVER YOU WANT. Really. I answered this question probably about 20 times today, and my most common response was "eat it with a spoon." Second most common was "Whatever you want" and third was probably "Put it on pancakes, waffles, ice cream, eat it with a spoon, get creative!" Condescending to people is not ever advised or condoned in my book, so this was all said with a smile and a genuine attitude. At least, I hope it came across that way. AJ loves this question about as much as I do, so once his response was "You can put it on anything. Steak, other people, waffles..."etc. Which is true. Although I would not advise putting it on steak.
I was cold enough that I think I startled some of my friends who stopped by to say hi, who were like, "naw, it's warm." In reply, I simply put my hands on their forearms and they jerked back, realizing that I'm actually Elsa from Frozen. Except I'm terminally brunette and I should probably just wear gloves constantly--not because I spew ice and snow but because I'm actually probably made of it. One of my friends told me I was "like ice cream," after feeling how cold I was, which I took to be a compliment because ice cream as a foodstuff is pretty amazing. Even if it's cold.
AJ's girlfriend, Erika, eventually brought us jackets because she's the best, and both of us finally got on the path to thawing out. Although it's officially lots of hours after the market ended and I'm still having a hard time getting warm.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go to bed under two blankets. In the middle of June.*
*I'm fairly sure I'm middle aged inside. I mean, I watch The News Hour and PBS with alarming regularity and I also do listen to NPR, so I'm basically there already. I'm pretty sure sleeping under two blankets in the middle of June is just the icing on the possibly-geriatric-inside-cake. Except possibly-geriatric-inside-cake sounds absolutely terrible. Forget that metaphor. Now. Where's my heating pad?
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