Dear Wigleaf,

I just came inside after starting my car because according to my phone it's -12 degrees and even though I know it's terrible for the environment to warm our cars up, I can't drive if I can't feel my toes. It's funny, my phone also says it "feels like -14 degrees." I think I might argue that it feels like -15 degrees.

In case you are somewhere warm sipping a cocktail, which I hope you are, -12 or -14 or -15 is fucking cold.

I'm on break from school next week and many of my colleagues and our students and their families are going to warm places (maybe you will see them). I am not. I am staying here and hunkering down like some rodent who lives underground. Not one of the little rodents that pops up through the snow and eats birdseed and then dives back down. More like one of those round, football-sized rodents that may be a woodchuck or a beaver or a groundhog or some other generic chunky, wide-eyed hole-dweller, that waits until it's not fucking cold out to start foraging for whatever it's going to eat.

I'm likely going to eat lots of carbs next week and not feel at all guilty about it. I may go days without a leafy green vegetable. I will drink expensive beer out of 16 ounce cans. I will stay inside by the fire with a book and a dog and Bill, who will occasionally ask if we should do something, and we'll both decide, after listing options, that no, in fact, we shouldn't do anything.

Dip your warm toes in the ocean for me—mine will be too cold to come out for a few more months.

Emily