The cold wars

Well, the heat is back on. But still, it’s cold.

Just last night, I was trying to make dinner while wearing gloves, which isn’t so easy. I’m accident prone and not too dexterous to begin with, so you can imagine what ensued. Yes, the gloves are now charred and splattered with tomato sauce.

So why, you may ask, am I forced to endure these frigid conditions? Here’s why (she says, with an undercurrent of quiet rage in her voice): the husband insists on keeping our house a chilly 70 degrees.

Being forced to live in arctic conditions does not suit me at all. I am not an Eskimo.

So here is how this situation is being addressed. Let me illuminate with a summary of our nightly ritual. We go to sleep, space heater in the bedroom, blasting its comforting warm air and humming white noise. I fall asleep, with a smile on my face. At first evidence of my peaceful slumber, the husband furtively slips out of bed to turn the heater off. I wake up a couple hours later, shivering, and turn it back on.

This goes on for hours, which does not lead to a good night’s sleep.

I figure I have four choices here:
a. wear him down by standing my ground and repeatedly raising the thermostat to a cozier temperature, b. install a sensor device on the space heater to prevent the impudent fiend from turning it off, c. spring for an electric blanket or d. move out.

I’ll eventually figure it out, but right now, I’m too COLD to think.

The underestimated strength of a mushroom

Yes, there are mushrooms growing in my driveway.

She didn’t believe me – she had to see for herself, my friend Susan, who lives in an Atlanta neighborhood where most everything is nice and tidy, with no mushrooms growing in anyone’s driveway.

When I brought her out to see them – brown, fleshy buttons, pushing through the black asphalt like crowning infant heads – she pushed down on the soft top of one with her finger, exclaiming, “It IS a mushroom – how can a mushroom be strong enough to do this?”

She looked around at all of the holes surrounded by black chunks of broken driveway – a real mess in her eyes.

“Pour vinegar on them,” she said. “That’ll stop them from growing.”

But I don’t want to stop them from growing – does that make me crazy? (And if so, who cares?)

The fact is, those mushrooms give me strength and hope each day I drive past them. Because if a mushroom can push through concrete, by golly, any one of us is capable of unbounded strength and greatness.

Chilly circumstances inspire

I am living inside of a 3,000-square-foot ice cube. Icicles hang from my dining room chandelier. I can’t feel my toes.

The heat’s off. It’s chosen to malfunction on the coldest day this fall.

The good news is that I have come up with yet another invention to add to my long list: an electric keyboard warmer. Being the dedicated scribe that I am, I am still typing away, despite the fact that my fingers have turned blue. And unfortunately, I am not nimble enough to do that while wearing gloves, which leads me to my second invention: electric heated gloves, specially made for use while typing.

Any financial backers out there? I need to hear from you before frostbite sets in.