The trouble with Cold weather, Stockings, and a Lost car

I've lived in a tropical country all my life. This meant enjoying 95 degree F (35 degree C) weather almost 10 months in a year and frequent beach getaways. I've been bracing myself for the notorious US East coast cold fall/winter weather and suffice it to say that I didn't prepare enough.

A few weeks ago, Charlottesville weather started to get more chilly. Mornings were cold at about 55 F (13 C) and nights hit a low 36 F (2 C). My teeth are literally chattering in this temperature. So my wardrobe changed overnight from nice and cool t-shirts and summer dresses into turtle necks, long-sleeved shirts, scarfs, and warm coats. This gets trickier with recruitment week and company briefing days.

I've been so busy and stressed out lately juggling between schoolwork and recruitment activities that I haven't actually thought of my personal girly woes. Two incidents these past days reminded me there's more trouble in life than finding the best mutual fund to invest in or how to approach a case interview.

A few days ago, I found myself without a clean set of pant suit for a company briefing. So I decided to wear a business casual dress instead. Now, I knew this would be a welcome invitation to hypothermia for me (what with the start of winter sneaking in). But I checked the weather forecast that day and it was relatively sunny. To be on the safe side, I decided to put on stockings/hose, those lace top thigh high ones. It wasn't much protection from the cold but it was better than bare. So at 7:50am, in the chilly morning air, my roommate and I walked through the unpaved road from our apartment to school. Three minutes into the walk, I felt my left hose start to run down. I tried hoisting it up back in place subtly. It didn't help that some classmates were walking behind us. I knew I should have gotten the pantyhose one but those somehow cuts your air supply. I was tempted to rush back to the apartment and take it off but that would make me late for class (the $5 penalty wasn't appealing to me either). So, every few seconds my roommate stood directly behind me to give me a bit of privacy to pull my stocking up. At that very moment, I wished my thighs were two inches bigger. Totally embarrassing. I won't even go to the details of how I managed to hold my stocking and cross the busy two-lane street and the parking lot to school. The memory of it will haunt me for a long time.

I cursed the cold weather then. Little did I know I'll be cursing it again not 24 hours after my stocking incident.

Last night, I planned on going out and taking the car. I didn't find our car in the parking lot so I figured my roommate used it. She got home later than me so I wasn't able to ask her about it. The next morning, as I was preparing breakfast, I casually asked her if she took the car last night. The conversation went along these lines:

Me: Did you use the car last night?
Roommate: No, I didn't.
Me: But it's not outside in the parking lot.
(Me rushing outside in the cold without a jacket to look for our car. I checked both ends of the parking lot to no avail.)
(Me with numb fingers rushing back inside the apartment.)
Me: It's really not there!
(Me thinking about the car insurance coverage if it included theft or misplacement...)
Roommate: Wait, wait... I think I used it two days ago when I went to the gym. I'm not sure if I drove or walked home..
(Her thinking about her crazy busy day two days back and how hectic it was that she forgot how she got home.)

So we rushed our breakfast and left at 7:30am to look for our car in the school gym's parking lot. If that panic wasn't enough to wake us up, the cold winter air sure did! That plus the lawn sprinklers that just had to turn on when we crossed the lawn. Thankfully, we found the car parked outside the gym with two parking tickets on the windshield. At least it wasn't towed.

So there, two days in a row my morning caffeine fix came in the form of loose stockings, a lost car, and a damned too cold weather for me. I'm scared to think what mishaps the real winter will bring.


P.S.
Special thanks to my roommate Astrid for having my back and for making mornings a little crazier than usual. Never gets dull at 127.