Shivering
Sitting in my warmest sweater, shivering. Mad.
The prairie always seems to do this. Instead of gracefully sliding into Autumn with days that slowly become shorter and shorter and cooler and cooler and then slurry down into Winter....
All of a sudden we go from wearing capris and tee shirts and going barefoot around the house to waking up at 3 in the morning and it is so cold that I'm fumbling with the dust coated electric blanket dial. Standing in a thin man's shirt at 3:12, trying not to wake up T as I reach under the bed to find the electrical cord to plug the blanket in. Once that is done, I have to find the dial and set it for it's highest setting and then run back into the bathroom to wash my dusty hands. No time to let the water get warm, the bedroom is at the end of the water run and takes forever to go warm. So...plunging my hands into icy cold water and, of course, the sliver of soap slips out of my grasp and it takes me forever to find it.
My legs are shaking at this point, so I jump back into bed and then....slowly, slowly, the bed warms up and I feel myself descending back into sleep.
A cold snap is what we call it and they are common here on the prairie. We jump from a temp of 71 at bedtime to 45 by 3 a.m.
The next day is cold and rainy with a high of 49.
We have the talk. The should we turn the boiler on? talk. Prairie weather is fickle. It could easily hit 90 degrees by mid week. And according to my weather app on my phone, it will.
So, no boiler. Too soon. We live in an old house. Turning on the boiler is complicated. It involves going around to all the air conditioner vents and shutting them. Then, the air conditioner is turned off and the boiler is turned on. If it warms up, we have to do the whole dance in reverse. We must turn off the boiler, open all the air conditioner vents (this involves lugging the ladder in from the garage) and turn on the air conditioner.
It also involves hope. Our boiler is ancient. It is as old as our house. It gets inspected every year and has been taken such good care of that we are told it may outlast our house. But, there is always that chance that this may be that year. The year when we have to get a new one. And boilers are expensive. Like thousands and thousands of dollars expensive. It was the sole reason I didn't want to buy this house 19 years ago. The plumbing and boiler were the same age as the house. Old as hell. A friend who knows his houses walked with us through the house and commented on her "lovely bones" but noted that "even old houses in this good of shape don't last forever." T begged me to take the chance. I said okay with extreme reluctance because I had fallen a little bit in love with this house, too. But, to be honest....I have been waiting for the shoe to drop for the last 19 years. Every year, the first time the boiler is turned on, I wait nervously for that click that tells me that the boiler is working and then wait to hear the sound of hot water running through the very old pipes. It is a cozy sound, but it makes me nervous.
And because it is such a hassle to turn over from air conditioning to heat, we have to deal with prairie play time regarding weather. It will take a while for it to decide to make that leap into the cold. But, instead of gracefully, slowly sliding into it....NO...it is like a gawky teenager, not sure what to do on a first date. The weather vacillates wildly from hot as hell to freezing cold.
I was told by my friend, Padric, that this is why prairie dwellers are so hardy. That their bodies have to acclimate very quickly to sudden changes of weather.
"It's just the way it is here," he explains.
So, I sit shivering. Waiting for the 70 degree weather promised tomorrow and the 87 degree weather warned about for Wednesday.
Hardy, my ass. Foolish? Perhaps.
The prairie always seems to do this. Instead of gracefully sliding into Autumn with days that slowly become shorter and shorter and cooler and cooler and then slurry down into Winter....
All of a sudden we go from wearing capris and tee shirts and going barefoot around the house to waking up at 3 in the morning and it is so cold that I'm fumbling with the dust coated electric blanket dial. Standing in a thin man's shirt at 3:12, trying not to wake up T as I reach under the bed to find the electrical cord to plug the blanket in. Once that is done, I have to find the dial and set it for it's highest setting and then run back into the bathroom to wash my dusty hands. No time to let the water get warm, the bedroom is at the end of the water run and takes forever to go warm. So...plunging my hands into icy cold water and, of course, the sliver of soap slips out of my grasp and it takes me forever to find it.
My legs are shaking at this point, so I jump back into bed and then....slowly, slowly, the bed warms up and I feel myself descending back into sleep.
A cold snap is what we call it and they are common here on the prairie. We jump from a temp of 71 at bedtime to 45 by 3 a.m.
The next day is cold and rainy with a high of 49.
We have the talk. The should we turn the boiler on? talk. Prairie weather is fickle. It could easily hit 90 degrees by mid week. And according to my weather app on my phone, it will.
So, no boiler. Too soon. We live in an old house. Turning on the boiler is complicated. It involves going around to all the air conditioner vents and shutting them. Then, the air conditioner is turned off and the boiler is turned on. If it warms up, we have to do the whole dance in reverse. We must turn off the boiler, open all the air conditioner vents (this involves lugging the ladder in from the garage) and turn on the air conditioner.
It also involves hope. Our boiler is ancient. It is as old as our house. It gets inspected every year and has been taken such good care of that we are told it may outlast our house. But, there is always that chance that this may be that year. The year when we have to get a new one. And boilers are expensive. Like thousands and thousands of dollars expensive. It was the sole reason I didn't want to buy this house 19 years ago. The plumbing and boiler were the same age as the house. Old as hell. A friend who knows his houses walked with us through the house and commented on her "lovely bones" but noted that "even old houses in this good of shape don't last forever." T begged me to take the chance. I said okay with extreme reluctance because I had fallen a little bit in love with this house, too. But, to be honest....I have been waiting for the shoe to drop for the last 19 years. Every year, the first time the boiler is turned on, I wait nervously for that click that tells me that the boiler is working and then wait to hear the sound of hot water running through the very old pipes. It is a cozy sound, but it makes me nervous.
And because it is such a hassle to turn over from air conditioning to heat, we have to deal with prairie play time regarding weather. It will take a while for it to decide to make that leap into the cold. But, instead of gracefully, slowly sliding into it....NO...it is like a gawky teenager, not sure what to do on a first date. The weather vacillates wildly from hot as hell to freezing cold.
I was told by my friend, Padric, that this is why prairie dwellers are so hardy. That their bodies have to acclimate very quickly to sudden changes of weather.
"It's just the way it is here," he explains.
So, I sit shivering. Waiting for the 70 degree weather promised tomorrow and the 87 degree weather warned about for Wednesday.
Hardy, my ass. Foolish? Perhaps.
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