Extending My Repertoire

I am practicing typing with my gloves on and it isn’t quite as hard as I thought it might be. I think it is just going to require a little practice. It is cold! My house is not really set up for this kind of extended cold weather. I have two electric heaters in this part of the house. One full time and one that I just use when I want a little eye candy in the form of a fake fire and need a little extra warmth nearby, but even these don’t work quite enough right now.

I have closed off the back half of my house by moving my bed into the living room. Of course it is a large room and attached to the kitchen so it isn’t much of a problem. I don’t know how cold it is in the bedroom, but the clock/thermometer died about a week ago. I checked the batteries. They’re still good. I think it froze to death. I do still have clothes in there, but I try to remember to get them out the night before. Hoar frost only looks soft and fuzzy.

Trips to the bathroom are kind of like going to the outhouse. I have a little space heater in there for showers, but it takes too long for anything else. I haven’t had to chip the ice out of the toilet yet, so I figure I’m still ahead of the game. Of course whoever plumbed this house hooked the toilet up to the hot water heater…well, that’s an entirely different story.

My son was given a hundred gallons of heating oil this year, which is a very good thing because the wood man disappeared for a couple of critical weeks and we ran out of wood upstairs. In the meantime whenever he turns on the furnace I get a small amount of residual heat in my house. Nice, but what kind of yayhoo installs heat vents on the ceiling? I suppose that goes along with the hot water toilet.

I imagine I will be tired of this long before spring, but it surely isn’t intolerable. In fact, it’s kind of cozy and fun right now. It also is nice and bright. I have eighty four inches of triple insulated windows in my living room, looking out at the beautiful Smokey Mountains and soon, typing with my gloves on is just one more thing I’ll be able to add to my repertoire of strange and mostly useless skills.