BRR!

(February 2007: That's me. And my old neighbor in the full length camo snowsuit Yeah, the snow is as tall as I am.)

I'm originally from Western NY. You know, by Buffalo, where it snows a lot. Then I went to school in Oswego. Maybe you heard about it on the news? I'm intimately familiar with the dreaded lake effect snow. What I'm trying to say is, it gets really cold. And snowy. And sucky.

And now that I live in NYC, the weather has been a lot better. But this week it's been freaking cold! And I haven't fully unpacked since moving here (don't judge!) so I couldn't find my winter coats. That blue one in the photo is so warm and awesome. I've had it for years and it's held up to some brutal winters.

I thought, "This is no problem; I'm from Upstate! I've lived with snow and bitter temperatures all my life! Only the locals (or what I used to imagine the locals looked like) would need a coat down here. I'm too tough for this." And so on.

But I was wrong. As it turns out, without my awesome Columbia Bugaboo, I'm no tougher than the locals. I found it today and I was soooo relieved.

I started thinking, what if I didn't have a winter coat at all? Lots of people don't. So this woman in San Francisco (do they even need coats there?) started One Warm Coat, which is where you can donate warm winter outerwear, find a coat drive in your area or start one of your own. They even get sponsors like the Burlington Coat Factory and The Gap to pitch in. Awesome right? So look them up, then be a good human and look in your closets and donate! One Warm Coat makes sure that the coats and mittens that they receive are given away for free to those who need them.