Cold and Dreamy

I woke up early in the morning; cold, disoriented, needing to make a trip to the bathroom and reluctant to go because I couldn’t bear the thought of climbing out from under the pile of covers on my bed and because of the dream…a dream where a child was blamed for an adult’s bad behavior and where I intervened in a rather violent way.  Shocked by my own violence and yet convinced that I had done the right thing I found myself in a garden – and then awakened to this foggy chill.

At last, throwing back the quilts and sheets I threw my legs over the side of the bed, fishing for my slippers and dashed across the sloping hall into the pool of light in my bathroom.  Where shivering with cold I realized it was time to turn the furnace on!

Not even officially autumn and I was going to turn the furnace on!  I knew where the thermostat was.  I had located it the day before knowing this time was coming, but now was the hour.  I shuffled through the living room in slippers aptly named for the way they carried me and fumbled for the light switch.  Turning on the furnace meant knowing which direction was the word, “Heat.”

Slipping the little lever into that position I turned and looked for the registers.  I have been pondering which ones might be cold air returns and which might expel that blessed warmth that comes when winter approaches and the furnace is fired up.  In this old house there are all sorts of antique grates and grills stashed in odd places, but I remembered one behind the couch that most certainly would be a heat duct.

Too early to be neat or logical, I simply pulled the couch away from the wall and revealed that duct, releasing the heat so that it could flow into the room and not warm the bones of my beautiful red sofa.  Then I rushed back to bed and grabbed Bearnard, pulling him close and pulling the sheets over my head to contain the warm air of my breath and warm up my icy body.

Several hours later I woke up, warm, alert and past the trauma of early morning dreams.  Then my day started in earnest.