Warm Coat, Cold Butt

01.25.06

So winter comes and my ass is perpetually cold. Which really isn’t a problem until I crawl into bed with my husband and he screams.  I guess there’s a case for pajamas.

            Last year I decided it was time for me, the Northland lifer, to finally buy a decent jacket.  One that actually covers my behind.  I wanted something warm, but not bulky, functional but not ugly.  That doesn’t sound like impossible criteria, does it?

            It took some doing, but I found one.  Ice blue with cozy gray trim.  Pockets galore.

            Long enough to keep my butt warm.

            At home I noticed the pockets actually had labels.  “Cellular phone” on one inside pocket, “Cord Lock” next to a small plastic square with an X sliced into it (think of the top of a McDonald’s cup) on the flap of another.

            I was duly impressed – not only had I found myself a nice cozy jacket, it’s a jacket designed to please those born after 1986.

            For a day or so I carried my phone in the phone pocket, but then the thing would ring and by the time I unzipped the jacket and fished the phone out I’d missed the call.  Then I’d have to access voice mail, or recent calls, both of which is a little dangerouswhen you’re driving.  (Yeah, yeah, I know, hang up and drive). 

            Soon after that, in an impossible rush to get out of the house with baby, diaper bag, bottle, my own bag, and my coffee, I discovered a cool thing; a baby bottle fits in the phone pocket much better than the phone.  And stays warm, too.  Now there’s a definite plus.

            I tried my MP3 player in the pocket with the “cord lock” – and threaded my headphones through like a good little hipster, but somehow when I stuffed the headphones into the pocket, then pulled out the player to turn it off the whole thing got into a tangled mess.  And I wondered, really, if driving with headphones on was a risk to safety and well-being anyway.

            On my way into SuperWalmartHell one day I realized the pocket my MP3 player had been in was big enough for a portable CD player.  Hmmm.  Diapers, anyone?

            Now on any given day my cool hip jacket is filled with the daily accoutrements of mommy-hood: checkbook, sippy cup (because the baby’s outgrown bottles), a diaper – wait a minute, two diapers), a lollipop (in case of kid-falling-asleep-in-car-at-naptime-before-we-can-get-home emergency) cell phone that’s not in the cell phone pocket because that’s where the sippy cup goes now, emergency quarters in case we end up somewhere with a carousel or lame-o racing car or super-high-bounce-ball machine, and the keys  – oh crap, where are the car keys?  Oh, yeah, they’re clipped to the complimentary ski pass ring that came attached to the jacket.  I knew that was good for something.

            So it’s functional.  It’s not ugly.

            I may be hip … or maybe just have grossly exaggerated hips because I have so many pockets filled with so much stuff.

            But my ass is still freezing my husband out of bed.  I guess my old jacket wasn’t the problem.  Oh well, you can’t win them all, right?

 

(no, I don't know why the font is goofy)

 

To read Warm Coat, Cold Butt from the Reader Weekly archives click below:

http://www.readerweekly.us/2006/355/Sheri_Johnson.html