Stick Man of the Tundra

I am kind of skinny. It's a little better than it used to be, what with the going to the gym and the protein shakes and the incipient alcoholism, but in general, I am still kind of a skinny bitch. I clatter around on wee little chicken legs, waving my wee little stick arms about and rolling my big melon head around my wee little stick neck.

This has always been bad for my self-esteem, but it's never been a real significant problem before. Except, you know, it turns out that body fat is, like, insulation, and we stick people... well, we don't really do so well out here on the tundra.

It takes approximately twenty seconds to cross the street from my building's front door to the bus stop where I catch my ride in to work in the mornings. On good winter days, I have a coffee to keep me warm. On bad winter days, there's an evil biting wind that sucks heat directly out of my eyeballs. On very bad winter days, poor road conditions make the buses run half an hour late, and I am forced to lick at the bottom of my ice-cold coffee for warmth as I slowly, slowly, freeze to death.

I had to run an errand today that took me to a building three blocks away, through what I would call a blizzard, and what the tundrans apparently like to call a flurry. (I say that if you can't see the sky? It's not a flurry.)

Block one, I lost all feeling in my head.

Block two, my fingers froze off.

Block three, polar bears killed me and ate my face.

I have come to the awful realization that I am never going to survive life on the tundra without investing in (1) snow tires and (2) body fat. Unfortunately, I am (1) poor and (2) have the metabolism of a hummingbird. So if you happen to be walking across the tundra one of these days and you see a pair of chicken legs sticking up out of a snowbank, think on me fondly. And then leave me alone -- the polar bears already got all the good bits.