Since the duration of Autumn in Lebanon is a weekend, it seems that winter decided to officially roll in as of last Monday. This is confirmed by the 3 common signs: your house has rugs again, your winter clothes have reappeared, and you’re having (maybe) non-sexual wet dreams of a jacuzzi filled with non-sticky hot chocolate and mini marshmallows.

And so 10 Reasons You Secretly… – The Winter Edition

1. Waking Up in the Morning

You’re all wrapped up under heavy blankets. It’s warm. It’s safe. It’s all yours and you’re never going to leave this feather fort of cotton. What’s that, body? You need to pee? No, you don’t. What’s that alarm? Time to get up? No, it’s not. And not to use profanity but, in the words of Babe, BAH RAM YOU ALARM. Snoozing is the reason you have set 4 consecutive alarms with different tones. You know what awaits you: you have to get out of your cocoon and then get undressed to change into whatever layers are going to return you to the warmth that you currently have, the same one that took all night to create. The dog is barking, the duck is quacking, and then there’s the nuclear holocaust alert that is your phone’s way of saying “THE SHIT HAS HIT THE FAN, MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!”

Uhm, how ’bout no. Snooze.

2. Hot Water Dependency

You would rather go a week without a shower than take an ice cold one (okay, you’ll go to Teta’s before that happens…I hope) but the dependency on hot water that develops during winter is always surprising. You’re late for work and the hot water heater was off all night. Shower? No. Okay, fine, shower. Short-haired folk, you win on this one. You don’t have a layer of drippy icicles attached to your scalp once this is over. Are you hiding in your bed wrapped in your mom’s fluffy robe wishing you were home-schooled/freelanced/never had to morning-shower ever again? Skip the shower you say? You still have to wash your face with the liquid cousin of an unlicensed acupuncturist. And then your hands are never warm ever again.

3. Darker Earlier

Normally you’re not afraid to walk to your car after a late afternoon at work but then again, no one told you to park in the underground-flickering-light-leaky-pipe-horror-scene-you’re-all-going-to-die-down-here-umbrella-corporation parking lot. So now that it gets dark at 5 p.m., you’re running like the Matrix phone is ringing. It’s okay though, there’s a security guard who looks like a sweet old grandpa, kind of like the man who used to sell you 500L.L. bags of Fantasia chips in the village when you’d go on walks to the mini market because you were bored. He’d give you free chocolate when you were short on change because he knew you’d be back once you get another Eidiyyeh from your old-school-Marlboro-reds-only uncle or when you got bored again…so 30 minutes tops. 3amo Security even has the same tooth missing under his bushy mustache…maybe he’ll give you a free “lo7 chocola”, too. TANK, I’M IN. *hand on car window*

4. Michelin Man

“Oh, winter wardrobes are so elegant”/”Don’t you love layers”/”Leather jackets are so badass.” Yes, you all look rather dashing and sophisticated in your coats, shalls, and tights with little bows on them. Everyone loves a cashmere sweater. Especially if you’re not the one wearing it and you’re hugging a cashmered entity. Sawwwwft. You momentarily turn into a cat as you nuzzle the sweater before realizing it’s attached to a person. “Sorry, I was just testing to see if you had an irregular arrythmia, it’s quite common, just looking out BRO.” If the sweater’s fresh from the laundromat, try your best not to breathe in all the softness…loudly. Anyway, because you are a hot tamale of cloth, you tend to be rounder than your actual self.  Welcome to the Michelin Man Army. This is completely normal so if for some reason the answer to “does this ski jacket make me look fat?” is a “no”, then you should eat a double cheeseburger wrapped in bacon because even Popeye’s Olive becomes a beehive in those things.

5. Driving Lectures

Because it’s raining, people don’t know how to drive. In a country where people don’t know how to drive to begin with, this can mean very scary things to worried family members, especially parents. Rain is suddenly the perfect reason not to go anywhere…even if it rained 4 days ago. You see, roads don’t dry until March so you might as well just stay home. “Invite your friends over, where are you guys going to go in this?” Of course, this doesn’t work because your friends parents are saying the same thing to them so everyone’s just inviting each other over and you’re caught in the Snowball of Parental Worry. Don’t even try the I’m-driving-to-Faraya card. But, honestly, don’t even try driving there because them bitches be crazy.

6. Uggly Shoes

Uggs galore. Studded boots. BoyzIIMen Timberlands everywhere. Burberry patterned boots – there’s always a pair of those around. These huge shoes are your only hope against keeping your feet (and sometimes your entire calves and knees) dry. If you get the really heavy duty kind, you may enjoy charging through puddles way too much pretending your Godzilla and then acting out the scene with the lighter. Winter footwear gives off the illusion that we have tree stumps for feet. We are all Hobbitses.

7. Wet Socks

HOW this happens baffles me. Could it be because you decided to live dangerously (props if you read that in Austin Powers’ voice) and wore your Converse instead? Could it be that your boots are not waterproof and you should’ve got those kind that make you look like you sacrificed a family of rubber ducks to make them? Whatever it is, you end up with wet socks. These go right up there with the roads that don’t dry until March. The only solution is to leave them on a chauffage while you and your friend watch all four seasons of the OC. Okay, skip season 4.

8. Cold Nose

It is known that the extremities are usually the parts of the body that are always the coldest. For me, it’s the nose that’s the coldest. Can’t they invent an invisible wool clown-nose? Or something you can just slip on to keep it toasty? Stop thinking about a willy warmer.

It’s even worse when you get a cold and you develop a love-hate relationship with the tissue box. Personally, I become Rudolph reincarnated in human form and no, I don’t have a thing for naming myself after male deer.

9. New Year’s Eve Obsession

The discussions as to where you will be spending NYE begin. You round up the lists of people who will be in the country, people you actually want to spend it with, people you want to avoid, and people you have to invite because they’re part of a package deal – a get one, buy 5 free sort of posse. Then comes the part where you have to figure out if these people want to actually fork over cash, go thrifty, or use the “I’m so over it, I’m staying home” excuse because this will determine whether you need tickets to a party, keys to a house/chalet, or just enough pesos for a bottle of Jack and a copy of Snatch. Don’t stress, the NYE plan will change 8 times before December 31st.

10. End of the Year/World

You hate the beginning of winter because it means another year is ending and you don’t know when that happened because last time you checked it was still February so it shouldn’t be winter AGAIN if it’s still winter but it’s November and another year has passed and you haven’t done everything you said you were going to do and you’re aging and your life isn’t going the way you thought it would and things were SO different last November but different is good because it helps you grow and there’s time to be something and achieve greatness and we’re all going to die in December.