Weather 101

Before I could spew my vitriol against the weather onto these pages, it stopped raining, and the sun is even trying to come out, if ever-so feebly. From the window here next to the table, I can see dark clouds moving in to put a stop to that sunshine business, smoke rising from several neighboring chimneys, and some valley fog. It's at the far end of our valley, where it intersects with another one. When it's really thick and fills more of the valley, it makes me think of the arrival of the "fire worm" in the film Thirteen Warrior. Oh, Antonio Banderas—you are my sunshine.

It's still chilly in the house. Lovely husband (L.H.) is working on getting the wood delivered; it feels decadent (and expensive!) to turn on the heater when it's almost 21 C (70 F) inside, so we don't. I wonder if it's cheaper to pay for the gas to heat the water in the radiators, or to pay for the electricity to run all the incandescent lights and heat up the house? (Hoorah! The sun shooed away the clouds and is now searing into the skin on my face, intensified through the glass of the window. Aaaah!)

My normal cold-beating M.O. is to put on a pot of coffee, work in the unheated study until I can't feel my toes or my bladder threatens to burst, then take a break long enough to defrost, refill my coffee cup, and pee. Sometimes, I put on another pair of socks or a scarf or a second sweater. (In case you were wondering, I don't like the cold.) Then it's a cup of soup for lunch, and a pot of decaf in the afternoon. I'm all about hot drinks, you see.

When I get really, really cold, I vacuum or take a hot shower. Vacuuming actually does provide enough movement to warm up the old muscles, but unfortunately it also sets off the never-ending nosebleed. So I try to ignore the dirt for as long as possible, which is not easy when you have beige tile. The showers are less about cleanliness than about boiling myself until my bones start radiating residual heat to the rest of my body. Mmmmm... boiling.

The other remedy for cold weather is enjoying our plants (I knew I'd finally be able to work them in!), but that's more of a mental health thing. I have managed to keep a poinsettia and a xmas cactus alive and thriving since last winter. The cactus even has 8 or 9 new buds; they are white with fuchsia edges—very dramatic. I don't have it together enough to force the poinsettia (which entails moving it in and out of dark closets so it will flower), so it's green.

Then there's Pumpkin Head. I bought flowers (mums?) last fall in a pot that is covered with small orange and black tiles that create the effect that the pot is a jack-o-lantern. Very cute. So I put some hot-pink heather in it recently, and it looks like Don King, if he had hot-pink hair and a jack-o-lantern face. It could be a new look for him.

L.H. bought over 100 Euros worth of flowers last May, many of which promptly drowned during the horribly wet summer we had. The hanging geraniums seem to be the sturdiest of the lot; there are still plenty in the window boxes on the lower balcony (very Bavarian-looking). In a last-ditch attempt to keep them alive, L.H. moved the surviving standing geraniums inside, where they look cheerful on the windowsill. And they don't stink like the ones my mom had when I was a kid. Maybe those were the special stinky Texas kind.

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After picking up my darling daughter (D.D.) from school (stabbing-free days: 1), I spent a large part of the afternoon sitting next to her in the sun, crocheting and offering moral support for her homework. What I really needed to be doing was proofreading (400 pages down, 400 to go); what I really wanted to be doing was updating my blog. Is that obsessive? Good, I didn't think so.

[Note to family members reading this: if you have a strong aversion to crochet, comment below or email me, or it's potholders for xmas. Bwa!ha!ha!]