It’s been cold here lately, but for all I know, when you read this, we could be enjoying temperatures in the 70s.  Who can tell?

I have no idea why this part of the world is dubbed the temperate zone.  According to my dictionary, temperate means “exercising moderation and self-restraint.”  Ha!  Intemperate would be more fitting.  Or ill-tempered, perhaps.  Living here is like sharing the house with an eccentric, aging relative.  Or a teenage girl.  Week in, week out, we suffer unpredictable mood swings of climate.  There is nothing temperate about it.  We live in the hormones-out-of-control, off-your-medication zone.

I remember one weekend in August at Blossom Music Center,  where the Cleveland Orchestra goes to summer camp, when the temperature plummeted to 40 degrees.  Not exactly what you expect in August and certainly not what you’re looking for when you plan a night of symphony under the stars.

On this side of the calendar, the weather’s even more erratic.  Unlike Minnesota or North Dakota where it tends to get bone cold and stay that way, here our poor bodies almost never get a chance to adjust.  An average winter week might include three or four days of cold and gray, followed by colder and grayer until a sunny and warmer shows up to thoroughly confuse the issue.

Just about the time our outer epidermis gets used to the idea of freezing, we have a sudden thaw.  Physiologically we’ve let down our guard and when the next Alberta clipper roars through, we’re no better prepared to withstand it than we were initially.  Each time, we have to start acclimating all over again.

Perhaps the difficulty is that we’re attempting to adapt to nothing.  That’s right.  There is no such thing as cold.  We learned this in high school physics, remember?  Cold does not exist.  What we call cold is merely the absence of heat.  Well, the mere absence of heat is sometimes rather striking here in northern Ohio, as is the presence of snow which, as far as I know, is actually real.  In fact, it’s a sort of weird claim to fame for the south shore of Lake Erie, something that garners national notice.  Now and again we get a spectacular blizzard and everybody in the country is treated to hatless roving reporters blithely mispronouncing “Ashtabula” while standing knee-deep in lake-effect snow.

My friend George has advanced a theory concerning the transmigration of veins and arteries to explain why the first cold snap of the year seems so much colder than similar weather later in the season.  It’s flawed, but nevertheless, here it is.  George’s idea is that your blood vessels hang around near the surface of your skin when the weather is mild.  When the cold hits, they move to their deeper winter position, but because it takes them a little while to react you feel the cold more than you do later in the season.

I think he might have something that would prove-out in Minnesota or North Dakota where, as I mentioned, it tends to get cold and stay that way.  But here in Ohio, where we put up the Christmas lights in our shirt sleeves just a month after our kids go trick-or-treating in subzero weather, our veins and arteries never know exactly which direction to head.  They’re as confused as the traffic at University Circle.  Things just aren’t as clear-cut weather-wise around here as in many other places.  George is a life-long Lakewoodite.  He should know this.

As to how to cope, besides soup, I have no advice to offer other than that you keep a pair of red socks handy.  Red socks, everybody knows, keep your feet warmer than any other color.  It doesn’t help much...  but it’s something.