Its 30 degrees and snowing outside and I am not wearing a winter coat.

I am wearing a lined raincoat with a pashmina, leather gloves and a very cute beret. I am not really warm, but I am dry. And I don’t have a heavy coat on so its all good.

I absolutely hate wearing a winter coat. More than snow, ice, blizzards and folks who can’t drive in bad weather, wearing a heavy coat is the thing about winter that makes me crabby. I have a system for avoiding the coat for as long as possible. The lined raincoat, wearing a wool blazer, even pulling out my rabbit fur hat and scarf – anything to delay pulling out the Winter Coat.

I rationalize that I am only going from the house to the car and then the car to the store. Why bother with a heavy coat you have to drag around while you shop or worse, wear and get overheated. Its worth a few minutes of discomfort to not carry a coat.

I have always hated wearing a coat which drove my mother crazy when I was a kid. I spent the entire winter of seventh grade wearing my maxi length toggle coat unbuttoned. My mother would scream at me and I would button it up, and immediately out of her sight I would unbutton it. I would arrive at school with wet clothes from not buttoning my coat.

Now, as an adult, I spend a fair amount of time shrieking at my own kid to put on your winter coat!, take a hat!, wear gloves! where are those boots you had to have! And, much to her mortification, I yell out the car window at her friends to put on the coat they are carrying.

Do as I say, not as I do.

Don’t get me wrong, I do wear a coat … eventually. It just pisses me off.

I would cheerfully wear a coat if I could find the right one. What I want is some kind of high tech astronaut clothing that is very, very thin and weighs next to nothing, is warm to -20 degrees and does not resemble or feel like a horse blanket. I have a new, fancy down-filled coat I bought end-of-season last year but even that makes me feel like I am zipped into a sleeping bag. At least its not a horse blanket.

I will put the coat on when a before-school argument includes the indignant “But you’re not wearing a coat!”, because I am supposed to be the example.

It will just be a puffy, thick, crabby example.