Perverse weather gods

Here we are on the 3rd day of May enjoying lovely spring weather...NOT. True, it is raining out and that is a definite spring need, but the temperature! This has crossed the line into absolutely ridiculous territory. The normal high for May 3rd is 64° and....last year it was 64° on May 3rd. This year? Not even close. My thermometer looks worse every time I look at it. We’re now standing at 44.2° and about the only good thing to say about that is that the rain hasn’t turned to snow yet. Same as yesterday. And same as tomorrow’s forecast. We’ve even had a couple of hard frosts this week. Our beautiful spring blooming trees have had a rough go of it.

And I’m freezing.

Last evening I couldn’t stand it any longer and started a fire in the stove. I had 8 logs left...now I have 4. After several days of keeping the thermostat set at 60° my bones were coated with a thick layer of ice. The stove’s heat was luxurious. It reached into all corners of the house and thawed me out. And the house retained most of the heat through the night. But all good things must come to an end. The house temp finally dropped below 60° a while ago and the furnace kicked on again. Aside from having to use gas for the heat, I at least feel a little better knowing that the gas utility dropped rates to summer rates on May 1st. That’s about a 50% savings. That, of course, is owing to the assumption that, by May 1st, no one needs heat around here so there’s not too much point in trying to gouge us after that date.

I feel for the renters in the area whose landlords turned the heat off on April 1st or May 1st. Some go for the earlier date while others still stick by the May 1st date. It has been a cold month and I can imagine that coping with no heat has been utterly miserable.

For my part, I’ve altered my habits a little bit. Rather than sitting around in the evening shivering, I’ve adopted the new habit of turning the thermostat down to 55° and going to bed at 8:30 or 9:00. With a nice pile of blankets to keep me toasty, I’ve caught up on my books, blogs, and DVDs the past several evenings. In comfort. That might be a silver lining.

Keeping fingers seriously crossed that the weather persons know what they’re talking about when they promise a 20 degree warm up after Tuesday. Maybe a bit less along the coast, but even 55° would feel tropical after the last couple of days. So far, this has been a 7 month heating year. That seems more in line with Alaska, not Massachusetts.

When we finally hit our 98°/99% humidity days, smack me upside the head if I dare complain. Just refer me back to the misery that was April, lingering into May.