The Weather

Weather in the 'Ville the last couple of weeks has become worthy of writing about.

I've had the mysterious little cold-like thing going on since the day after Thanksgiving. I can't seem to get rid of the thing. Every time I think I've turned a corner I wake up the next morning with gook up to my ears, literally. (Sorry if that's gross, but hey, it's descriptive!).

For awhile I thought it was something in the house, so I politely petitioned Jeannie to see if we could maybe do something like wash the bedsheets. Or scrub down the bathroom, or maybe fumigate the entire house. Nothing major. I just want to feel better.

Then it hit me Monday morning, as I was coughing up another lung shortly after wakeup.

It's this unbelievably inconsistent East Texas weather.

I'm not one of those guys. You know, the guys who have to begin every conversation with "Man this weather is somethun' else." The guys who couldn't have a conversation without that weather kick-start, you know?

Matter of fact, I have never been accused of needing any kind of kick-start to a conversation. Just ask my wife. Or any one of my three friends on earth.

But the temperature here over the last month has ranged anywhere from upper 20s to upper 70s, sometimes on a 24-hour basis. For example, I woke up Sunday morning to a miserably mild upper 50ish temp on the outside. We had the Christmas choir concert at church and my sinuses were raging. Battled through it but the exertion knocked me out Sunday afternoon, literally. I didn't watch a single NFL game really Sunday afternoon, I just went to bed.

Back to church in upper 50sh weather Sunday night. Got home, set up for the Cowboys-Giants showdown and about late second quarter I posed the question to Jeannie: "Is it just me or is it BLAZING hot in this house???"

She readily agreed, and rather than sweat through the evening we decided to do the unthinkable, which was turn the air conditioner on. In the middle of December! Ten days before Christmas, and we have to spend Lord knows how many kilowatt hours on the A/C!!

I felt better instantly. I went to bed and slept like a baby, finally. But I got up Monday morning with the same symptoms that have been plaguing me for a month. Shortly following my lovely wife's first "Good morning," came this warning -- "It's freezing cold outside."

Yep, an Arctic front had pulled a sneak attack overnight and invaded the land of perennial summer. Gone were the shorts-type weather of the past couple of days. I had to bundle up and pull out my heaviest coat.

My body, at nearly 40 years old, can still take a lot of things. I can still punish it with as much basketball, racquetball and occasional mud-wrestling (not really) as the next guy. But it can't take a daily 50-degree drop in temperature anymore. So my immune system is constantly asking for reinforcement, and I can't keep up.

The temperature hasn't risen out of the 40s since Monday morning here. Three days of actual Christmas-type weather. But I saw a forecast that had us back to the 70s -- yes , THE 70S! -- by the weekend. Then same forecast predicted another cold blast late in the weekend that would have things back to the 30s or so.

Welcome to East Texas. So, man, this weather is somethun' else...