It’s November. That’s bad enough. The hated-by-me early darkness is only slightly offset by the brighter early mornings. But unless I decide to spend November to March in the southern hemisphere, I’m stuck with short days.

That’s not new. What’s new is that I am always cold. When I am out on a November day, I notice that young people are wearing light jackets when I have already liberated my down coat from its summer hide-away. I’ll often grab a fleece from the closet when the sun isn’t warming our house.

In the 1973 oil crisis, we lowered our thermostat to a daytime high of 64 degrees, and kept it there even on the coldest days. Little by little, we’ve inched it up to 70 degrees and now even that doesn’t feel warm enough.

We feel colder as we age because we lose the protective fat layer under our skin. We are plagued with thin-skin.

Perhaps in more ways than one.