Oh snap. It's winter.

Birds in winter.

Hi.  Yeah.  Um.  I live in the southern hemisphere.  It's easy to forget because, despite the fact that the accent is unconquerable and that generous Kiwi hospitality flies out the window when they get behind the wheel of a car, this enZed living really offers a snug fit.  Sure, like every other dumb Amurican here, I miss my carne asada and I still get a little gooey-- I mean, seriously teary-eyed-- when my doctor spends almost an hour with me and only charges me forty bucks, but most days, when I look out the window, I don't consciously acknowledge that my new home is thousands of miles in distance and history from my old one.  Most days, I look out the window and think, "Damn, I'm fucking lucky."

This morning, I woke up to a lavender sky.  The ocean was jade beneath it.  The air, felt only on my face and neck as Dottie and I rambled down to the beach to watch the sunrise, was piercing.  Because it's winter.  Even wrapped in several layers, I'd failed to put it together.  I think there's a cognitive disconnect.  It's June.  School is out.  Summer starts.  I want to go to the fair and swim at night and ride my bike through the heat rising from a sunbaked asphalt.  I need a bathing suit and maybe I should consider waxing my legs.  I should eat a salad.  Somewhere.

But not necessarily here.  Here, I should make casseroles, I guess.  Or eggnog?  Maybe I should build a gingerbread house.  Without a guiding winter holiday, I'm a little unclear on the appropriate steps to take to reconnect the season with reality.  Christmas down under means sunnies and a surfing Santa.  So, I need something else.  With Flag Day already gone, maybe I appropriate Bastille Day or Canada Day.  I don't want to take the Fourth of July.  That one gets corndogs.  Period.

A quick review of public holiday options in New Zealand tells me that, whoa, there is no public holiday until September.  Bummer.  I could go with the obscure and celebrate Disobedience Day on the Third of July.  Or maybe Pecan Pie Day on July 12.  That sounds both plausible and palatable.  I suppose the long and short of it is, there's just no decent commercial holiday that's going to guide me through this new winter in summer paradigm.  And that means, shit, I'll have to figure out some sort of tradition on my own.  How liberating.  How lonely.  How brilliant.  I'm going to go buy some pecans.