Chilled to the bone

Thursday, 2:26 pm

By Kate

Sep

20

2007

Summer returned today and not a minute too soon. After the temperatures plummeted to those common for November, early in the week, I had nearly turned into a solid block of ice. Who ever heard of wearing three shirts and a pair of long underwear underneath thick fleece pants—in mid-September?! And I was still cold.

The first night of the cold front, I thought it would be lovely to snuggle down under my comforter. Yeah, well, it wasn’t warm enough and I woke up still feeling like a block of ice. I dragged my wool blankets out of storage and replaced my summer blankets. For extra warmth, I tossed the lad’s comforter on top of mine. No way I would be cold under all that. I thought.

That night was even colder and the house temp was down around 60°, which isn’t that cold, but my internal thermostat still hasn’t adjusted to a 20 degree drop in house temperature. And I resolutely refuse to turn on the furnace. So, when bedtime arrived, I jumped into bed and jumped right back out. It felt like lying on an iceberg. Criminy, what a wimp.

Then I had an idea.

I have a bunch of ice packs and they’re filled with the same goo as in the packs the lad used when he ran during cross country season. They are microwavable, so I stuck a couple of the medium sized blocks in the microwave and heated them up until they were quite warm. Not too hot to handle, but they gave off a good steady heat. Nothing untoward happened to them.

I brought them back upstairs and stuck them between the sheets. One at the foot of the bed and the other about mid-way up. I went back downstairs to let Terry out and by the time I was ready to go back to bed, the heat from those blocks had radiated out and it was toasty warm under the blankets. Oh my gosh, way better than a hot water bottle. Those blocks held heat for a long, long time, too. In fact, Abbie found one and slept on top of it for most of the night. I can’t speak for the comfort value of that, but she was happy. I believe she gave it a thumbs up.

Despite being able to sleep in a cocoon of warmth, the cold days still chilled me to the bone. I microwaved a couple of the small blocks and stuck them in my sweatshirt pockets. They got me through.

I’m down to two shirts today and no long johns. The frost hasn’t quite left my bones yet. Maybe by tomorrow, I’ll be back to a tee shirt for a couple of days. My chimney sweep arrives tomorrow afternoon and (fingers, toes, and everything else crossed), perhaps, he’ll just clean the chimney and call it good enough. I need my wood stove.