Erik and I can tell you how to avoid heat stroke, what to do with a sunburn, and how to get away from a gator (supposedly you run zigzag, but neither of us has tried it) but none of that helped when we moved from Florida to Western New York. We’ve lived in the great white north for 10 years now and built a whole new set of skills, but some things are pretty similar.
Truthfully, driving in a snowstorm isn’t much different from driving in a Florida thunderstorm. You can’t see well in either one, and traction is iffy. Prepping for a hurricane and a snowstorm both involve empty shelves at the grocery store and generators. In the winter in New York, you warm up your car before you get in, and in summer in Florida, you cool it off before you get in.
There were a few things that surprised us, though. It turns out that there are four whole seasons. In Florida, there was just hot and hotter. Parking in the winter is different because you can’t see the lines in the parking lot. Spring hits in one big bam. One day the trees don’t have leaves and the next day is a sea of green, or at least it seems that way. 40 degrees feels cold in the fall and toasty in the spring. We also had to learn that dark skies don’t mean thunderstorms are imminent up north like they do in FL. It took a few times of rushing home to realize this.
Now that we’ve been here a while, we wear t-shirts in 40 degrees with the best of them.
-Supergirl
I asked Supergirl if she would write a few blog posts about our real lives. We’re calling it Hank and Jane IRL, and if you don’t get the Hank and Jane reference, you need to read Errant Gods 🙂
