Baby, It’s Cold Outside!

So, I’m sitting in our old, drafty Victorian house, reminding myself that, during the spring and fall, it’s a lovely place to be – not too hot, not too cold, gentle breezes blowing...

But this is January, one of the coldest ones on record here in Western Pennsylvania, and half of the fifty-three windows in our house are missing the outside storm window. The twelve-foot ceilings look stunning on warmer days, but today they’re just taunting me. I know all the heat we’re paying for is hovering somewhere up around that twelve-foot-high mark instead of down here near my five-foot-high head. 

I have proofreading to do. I have student papers to grade. I’m behind on my reading. And, I really should be writing. 

But all of those activities involve sitting still in the house at these ridiculous “polar vortex” temperatures. That means three or four layers of fleece clothing, two pairs of socks, warm slippers, fingerless gloves (though I may switch to gloves with fingers or mittens if it gets much colder in here), and a space heater under my desk.  And don’t forget the lap blanket. 

When I start to see my breath around the computer monitor, I get up and jog downstairs for another hot cup of coffee.  I sail right past the thermostat. I don’t want to see how warm it isn’t in our house. But, if things don’t improve, I may have to use the hot coffee to thaw out my toes. Can you get frostbite inside your own house?

Several Facebook friends keep posting how many days it is until spring … every day. Instead of being an encouragement to my soul, I find it a mocking, deliberate attempt to make me regret buying this house.

And then this morning, I wake to find my husband downstairs with every light in the house on. He’s traipsing up and down the cellar steps with a flashlight, and he’s got out the manual for the thermostat he hurriedly put in last year when the other one went kaput. With temperatures outside hovering around -5 degrees Fahrenheit, I don’t want to hear him say he has to replace the thermostat again. I brace myself for that hot-coffee bath I may have to take today. I put the phone number for the local burn unit near the phone.

He tells me that he missed a setting for two-stage heating when installing the thermostat last year. This house has two (count ‘em, two!) furnaces, and we had assumed that they just weren’t efficient enough to keep up with this cold snap. But no, what has really been happening is that one poor furnace has been on for days at a time with no let-up, because the thermostat was never telling it to use the second furnace when it needed to.

And let me tell you, it needed to.

So now, with the weather forecast now set to hit 41 degrees in the next few days, and with a touch of the thermostat’s touchscreen, we are finally warming up in here. I may be able to sit at my desk and write today without having to worry about my fingertips freezing to the pen like that kid’s tongue to that pole in A Christmas Story. That novel may inch closer to “The End” today after all. 

Kinda makes you feel all warm and toasty inside, doesn’t it?

Figuratively speaking, I mean…

--Linda M. Au