Dear Santa
It is Christmas Eve and I know you are busy. Normally, I wouldn’t write to you. Granted, I thought I stopped believing in you when I was eight or nine, but I just wanted to say thank you for giving my children something to believe in. The last two years have been tough for us on a financial scale and it is getting a bit easier. This Christmas is a lot easier than last Christmas so I am hopeful. I am hopeful for the things that they believe in and the things that I believe in.
When I was child, we were seven children and granted, we were poor, and we didn’t always get the things we asked for on Christmas. That is one thing that I don’t take for granted as an adult. I pay close attention to my children ask for on Christmas because it is the one time I have to try more than my best to make sure they get exactly when they asked for because I want their childhood memories of Santa bringing gifts to last their entire lives.
I have found that the older I get the more I look at my life as if I were a stranger looking in. Would this stranger approve of my mothering skills, my home, my lifestyle, my career choices, etc.? How about my parents? Would they be proud? Maybe that has to do with age than anything, but I know that I am always trying to be a better person. I have my moments like any human where I screw up, but I try to be the best mother, wife, daughter, sister, aunt, friend, and employee I can be. However, I don’t always find people who prescribe to my same philosophy and I find myself giving them unsolicited advice on how to behave. Maybe that is the mother in me, or that opinionated woman I turned into, but it forces me to put my foot in my mouth more often than I would like. This is pre-RA and post-RA.
Anyway, Santa, I just wanted to thank you for allowing my children imagination at a time when most adults, myself included, are dealing with financial issues, worrying about whether we were have jobs tomorrow, or wondering where the state of our economy is headed. With all our worries, we don’t always have time to think about their little imaginations.
I have some unfinished Christmas shopping as I realized there was one Christmas wish I almost forgot. I guess Christmas shopping never ends until Christmas ends. Well Merry Christmas Santa! See ya next Christmas and every Christmas until my little ones stop believing and yes, the cookies are homemade. I decided you deserved better than the store brand this year.
Sincerely,
That crazy woman always trying to be the best mother, wife, daughter, sister, aunt, friend, and employee that she can be.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Bah Humbug to the Wind Chill
Nevertheless, here is a history lesson I borrowed from Wikipedia. The first wind chill tables and formulas were developed by Paul Sniple and Charles Passel while working in the Antarctic before World War II. They were made available to the National Weather Service sometime in the 1970s. Sniple and Passel based their research on the cooling rate of a small plastic bottle as its contents turned to ice while suspended in the wind on their hut roof, at the same level as the anemometer (An instrument for measuring wind force and velocity). In conclusion, the wind-chill index is said to provide a good indication of the severity of the weather.
Moreover, in 2001, the National Weather Service implemented a new wind chill index. The newer version is only used in the U.S. and Canada and it is determined by looking at skin temperature under various wind speeds and temperatures. The model is based on correlations of wind speed and heat transfer rates. Heat transfer is calculated for a bare face in wind, facing wind and while walking into it. Also, the wind chill only applies to temperatures at or below 50 °F and wind speeds above 3mph. Additionally, the method for calculation has been controversial (shocker, anyone?) because experts disagree on whether the model should be based on exposed skin versus covered skin. Also, resistance to cold varies from person to person and/or exposure levels. Frostbite can also be applied, but that is a whole other matter that I am not prepared to research. If you ask me, it’s a bunch a woobla for someone else to worry about since I plan on staying inside.
So, if you are one of those people wishing for a White Christmas this winter, I am sending a bah humbug your way. Next year, I will enjoy my Christmas some where sunny and warm, but in the meantime, I will be wondering what kind of idiot moves to back to Cleveland or wishes for this kind of weather.
