No fair, Mother Nature.

I was still feeling pleasantly full from pumpkin pie and finishing the last bit of leftover Thanksgiving dressing to even consider, let alone worry about snow, sleet, slush and stuff.

Why I had only just this morning finally pulled November from the little calendar stuck on the front of the fridge. And there it was, December and because I had yet to look outside and yet to consult the news, well, the snow came as a surprise. I felt tricked and - gee wiz this is too early.

At this time of the year I always enjoy it when someone in the crowd retells a story of a Thanksgiving long ago on the patio in 70-degree weather. These stories always give me hope that we can slip into December unnoticed and tip toe through the month without stirring up snowstorms. However, folks start playing "White Christmas" on the radio and the guy at the hardware store puts a load of salt out front - and well, surprise, surprise, the snow comes.

Bad weather makes us all do odd things.

Consider the galoshes I wear this time of year. Better yet, let's forget my collection of the oddest of all footwear ever conceived.

My old office manager Christopher was a dapper dresser for most of the year. His avocation is ballroom dancing and so he was a sharp dresser at his day job as well as on the dance floor. But when the cold winds started to blow, Christopher would don an elaborate knitted hood piece which covered his head and neck leaving a small oval for his face. You've seen this head scarf in various forms, but Christopher's scarf was something right out of medieval history. It looked as though all he needed in winter was a fencing sword and a damsel in distress to transport him to another time.

Bad weather dictates lots of things.

The other day my wife and I were extolling the virtues of the attached garage. We had such a luxury once upon a time. The garage was six steps down off the dining room. Back then we could leave sleeping children and heavy groceries and even winter garb to sit awhile and thaw in the car as the big old radiator warmed the narrow little space built more for a Model T than for our family station wagons.

Those were the days. Today our cars sit frigid in a pole barn structure. Nothing is colder than a car in a pole barn and the site of a frozen vehicle makes me want to turn around and suffer the late fine at the library or make do with whatever is left back in the near empty refrig.

Years ago we visited my sister when she lived in Germany. One of my favorite pictures from that trip is a shot of our reluctant three-year-old twin sons standing in front of a barn with a cow sticking her head out of a nearby door. This barn was attached to the farmhouse on the property. The set up caused a lot of conversation concerning the smells and sounds that one would have to put up with having a house and a barn built side by side with a connecting door.

Why would one do this to oneself? Weather could be the only answer. No walking out to the barn in the dark and the cold - no, not with an attached barn.

I can see the architect defending his design in the heat of the summer when the flies and the bellows and the smells wafted from the barn half into the house half.

"The snow made me do it."

Then again, winter weather toughens us up and sometimes gets the creative juices flowing.

And me, I'm working on a patent for my soon-to-beunveiled kermitton or mitkerchief - I'm not sure what to call it. This revolutionary winter wear combines the warming of the mitten with the practical of the handkerchief. It's all done via the miracle of velcro. No more dainty dabbing those frozen runny noses with ones mitten - not with a pair of kermittons handy.

Like I said, bad weather makes us do odd things.

Stay warm folks.