I’m glad I live where there are four actual seasons, where leaves change colors and an occasional snow storm blusters. I never appreciated Southern California’s 80-degree Christmases. But still, when the days grow short and chilly, I freeze!

I think my thermostat is broken. Not the one in my house, the one in my body. I’m cold all the time. Except when I’m in the shower or in bed under multiple fuzzy layers. No wonder I spend 90 percent of my non-working hours in these two places.

Between November and May, I have no visible skin, except my face and an inch of neck. The rest of me will resemble a wooly sheep. Well, a sheep on two legs with a human face and a couple other big variations. But you get the idea.

When I complained about being cold at work the other day, a 32-year-old male co-worker told me, “My grandmother is cold a lot, too.”

That did it. I’m not even going to mention to this young whippersnapper how my hip aches in the chill or how my fingers feel stiff before the heater warms up my car. And how I’ll be prickly with goose bumps, yet the thermostat says it’s 70 degrees in my classroom.

I used to blame my low-tolerance for cold on having thin Southern California blood. But I’ve lived here since 1998, so I don’t think I can use that excuse any longer. My corpuscles have had ample time to congeal into heat-radiating workhorses.

I don’t know why I’m always so cold. I mean, I’m on my feet all day in a 70-degree classroom, wearing a long-sleeve shirt under a sweater and a jacket over that, and I’m still shivering like Jell-o in the hands of a bikini-clad Eskimo in a blizzard.

Maybe I’m piling on too much clothing and should try wearing less when I’m cold. Maybe I have a lazy metabolism, and it figures, “Hey, there’s no need to get up and go to work when the ole broad has three layers of insulation doing the job instead.” Stupid metabolism!

Maybe my young, perspiring co-worker was right. Maybe it’s a sign of approaching geezerhood that I’m always cold. Give me a couple years and I’ll be wearing a sweater in July, buying support hose and dabbing Ben Gay behind my ears to attract the opposite sex.

Of course, everybody – young and old – wears a sweater in July in Utah. That’s because in the summer, everyone programs their air conditioning to replicate winter indoors.

Come to think of it, it’s no wonder I’m getting wrinkled, and it’s not from aging! I’m sure my premature wrinkling is due to the continual expansion and contraction of my flesh, going from the outdoors to indoors both summer and winter – hot, cold; cold hot.

Being cold is worse, though, because my wrinkles pucker, which my callow young co-worker is gracious enough not to stare at. Although I did hear him whisper to another youngster teacher, “My grandmother’s face does that, too.”