Hazy Shade of Winter

It was just less than a month ago that I posted pictures of the autumn drama at the Portland Japanese Garden.

Writing shit about new snow
For the rich
Is not art.
 ~ Robert Hass (supposedly a translation from 小林 一茶 (Kobayashi Issa)

As Kobayashi-san says; that shit's done with.

The weather has made a hard turn to winter. Mind you, it's winter in the Northwest, which means one of two things.

Typically it's an endless gray drizzle spiced with days of genuine hard rain. Low temperature 42, high temperature 44, rinse, repeat. That's the "west-wind winter".

Then every couple of weeks the polar high looms down over the intermediate space between the Cascades and the Rockies, over the high desert, and the east wind blows the clouds away and the cold in.

That's when you get mornings of freezing fog, and bright, chill afternoons that never let old bones warm, and my bones - those of which that aren't titanium aftermarket parts - feel very, very old on those sorts of days.

They're also not beloved of Portlanders, creatures of the Mediterranean that we are. So the Garden was quiet and I enjoyed the change from red and gold to spare black branches. 

Or bare red ones, as on the red-twig dogwood...

I should note that True Portland dies hard in the winter; this young woman attending the annual "Crafty Wonderland" fair refused to let the biting weather nip her toes back into closed shoes:

That's not actually an uncommon sight here (I'm pretty sure I've blogged about it somewhere but am too lazy to look...), the combination of a heavy sweater or jacket above some chilly pink toes below. 

Part of it may be hardiness, part of it may be unwillingness to surrender to the season. Part of it may be the simple ease of slipping into sandals rather than wrestling with heavy socks and shoes.

Whatever the reason, it's a thing, and a Portland thing, at that.

Speaking of Crafty Wonderland, several Portlanders took advantage of the seasonal surroundings to let some pretty serious Xmass-y freak flags fly.

One such was this gal; I couldn't get a great shot of her outfit but this gives you the idea - the entire front of her dress was an solid mass of Christmas-tree bling, like the gold-encrustation on Smaug's belly:

Plus glittery silver snowflakes in her hair. 

The effect was completely insane in a sort of holly-jolly way. The Nikes make it sort of Ugly-Christmas-sweater-casual. Fun look, but I sure couldn't pull it off. There's something to being cute and /or pretty that helps make "okay, that's freaky" into "awww...that's cute".

But the award for Most High-level Holiday Cosplay goes to the Elf Off The Shelf:

I don't want to show her face, so you miss the Santa-hat topping, but given the rest of the outfit you get the idea.

My favorite bit is from the hem to the floor; you got your saucy fishnets going for the whole "Santa Baby" frisky sex-under-the-Christmas-tree thing, but then you've got the massive engineer boots that add a touch of "...but-fucking-try-it-and-I'll-kick-your-fucking-ass" danger. 

Clearly this is someone who has the authority to get you on the Naughty List.

That's all for now.

This little post has been too much fun to load up with serious business, so I'll close with Christmas standard you know (It's the "Piano Guys" doing the Vince Guaraldi Peanuts tunes, and since Blogger is being a dick about letting me embed it, here's the link to copy and paste - https://youtu.be/tyPDQpel8bI and a finger to you, Blogger, for being dickish about this). 

But I will be back later in the weekend to discuss some of the nonsense that we're getting up to here in the Land of the East Wind Cold.

Back in a bit.

Barefoot in the rain

Speaking of fun things to do in Portland...

I often tell this to visitors and they refuse to believe it, but a genuine Portland woman is nearly immune to the cold from the ankles down.

The Timbers match Sunday was chilly and cold, but I saw at least three women who planned to sit or stand for an hour and a half in the cold rain in their flip-flops, like this gal:

Or this one:

My absolute favorite of the day, though, was the twenty-ish woman I bumped into in the Dutch Bros coffee-stand like who was wearing the Most Portland Things Ever - flip-flops on her feet but fuzzy warm gloves on her hand.

I laughed openly and asked her if I could take her picture because she was just so perfect. She agreed and admitted that she knew it seemed strange but that her hands got cold and her feet really didn't. And that she doubted that anyone else had come to the game in their sandals, at which point I assured her that others had, indeed - at least two others and probably more.

I should note that this is 1) typically a woman thing - though I'm seeing more men walking around in sandals in the winter recently - probably because their sandals are nicer and they take better care of their feet so they're prettier to see, and 2) only for the Rainy Season. When the snow arrives even a true Puddletowner finds the cold a little too biting. But...often the retreat is only tactical; it's not uncommon to see sandals-over-socks in the deep Winter months. Even then.

Don't get me wrong; the boots and sneakers and shoes far outnumbered the bare feet. But it warms my heart (if not my feet) that our Oregon gals are out there repping.

Cold feet and warm hearts? Yeah, that's how we roll here in the Rose City.