Just over a week ago it was 15 degrees above zero, sunny, and I could see my crocuses growing up through the soil. I was so happy. I wore a skirt with bare legs and some pretty MaryJanes. I put on a light jacket with my gauzy butterfly scarf and took a comfortable lunch time stroll through the downtown streets.

Then it snowed again.

Just a few days ago it was 18 degrees above zero, sunny, and I could see my tulips poking noses through the soil. I was so happy.  I wore a skirt with bare legs and some pretty mules. I put on a light sweater with a fuchsia scarf and took a comfortable lunch time stroll through the downtown streets.

Then it snowed again.

This is killing me.

I am so done with winter clothes. I have no idea what to wear anymore. Every morning I stand frozen in apathetic inertia staring into my closet.

I am starting to actually habour awful, hateful thoughts about trousers that only a few brief months ago I was enamoured of. Just the suggestion that I re-open the drawer with my woolen tights sends me into a raging fit.

It has to stop. I have to feel pretty again. I need to feel pretty again.

The key to pretty is my legs.

I need light tights.

Between you and me, I am getting older. … No, really. … I am not a girl anymore. I need to dress with elegance and not with the quirkiness of youth.

In my desperation to emulate the bare leg look I crave – that spring-has-sprung natural calf that my husband anticipates with such glee each year – I went shopping for a pair of nude tights. Not panty hose, they don’t offer quite enough warmth. Tights.

Do you think I can find a pair of tights that match my skin tone? I have wandered through every store I could find and have identified 50 shades of beige.

Should I be bound by a predilection for unnatural hues and youthful patterns that the fashion industry sells? What about what I want? I am the demographic with disposable income. What if I just want to buy simple, uncoloured slightly insulating legwear? Is that old fashioned? To want my leg to just look like a leg?

I don’t want to be squeezed or reshaped.

I don’t want to shimmer. I don’t want straps or fishnets. I don’t want plaid, or poetry. I don’t need my legs to make a profound statement on the state of the economy or to act as a signal of my voting intention.

I want durable weight, ivory/peach tinted body hugging but not body altering tights that demurely whisper “Look at my face”.

I am on the verge of despair. I may have to call in sick until the weather improves.