I finally get it.
I was born and grew up in Michigan, and now live just outside Chicago, so midwest winters are a part of life. It gets cold, it snows a lot, it's inconvenient, but it's also beautiful sometimes. Whatever you grew up with is "normal" to you. My parents got a condo in Florida years ago and started spending winters there. My mom's gone now, but my dad still goes. He's from Toronto, so he too grew up with cold snowy winters. Moving to Florida or California or wherever, just to get away from something that's a normal part of life, just seemed like wimping out to me.
But now, I finally get it. This winter has broken records for snowfall, consecutive subzero days, etc. I think between being spoiled by a couple of mild winters in a row, and the fact that I'm now over 50 and had that surgery a while back, I've finally gone from "What? This is normal. You deal with it." to "Fuck it's cold out. I think I'll move to Florida when I retire." This is the first winter where, a couple of times now, I've just plain dreaded the idea of going outside. I bundle up, I go, because you do what you gotta do, but it's just no fun. This winter has converted me.