On days like today we keep a electric space heater running in the “family room” which is the “basement” just a walkout space, a slab as otherwise known. On the main floor, over a crawlspace, we have to keep a fire going in the “dining room” which is what “is supposed to be the Living Room but we made an actual ‘dining room’ “since it’s too small for an effective ‘family/living room’ though we did use it as that for most of the years we’ve been in this house.
Days like today are the odd ones, most days are more mild in the Winter. It never got above freezing today, in fact didn’t even get withing a few degrees of that special temperature. Add the gusty winds into the mix, and it was in the teens or lower, single digits, all day, as “feels like” temperatures.
I wore socks and long boots, and a knit pant for warmth under my very long big tiered “western” denim skirt (which we got for $20 at some western shop last year … it was a much higher priced item originally), and a thin wool turtleneck longsleeve sweater. I’ve been alright all day like this. Not really cold, just cold hands on and off, but easily fixable. My feet, amazingly, have not gotten cold. 🙂 That’s the deal killer for me. Oft times even wearing boots I do get cold feet.
I’m not complaining about today then!
I went out one time this morning. I put on my long lined raincoat, which is like a Spring Coat, sort of, and felt fine going out to the hens to check on them, etc. I came back inside and realized my face was the only cold thing, it felt like my sinuses were frozen entirely. 🙂 Yes, that cold. Cold enough to do that, but that snippy cold didn’t feel so cold otherwise. Kind of like, very cold is like that. Dress for it and it only affects your nose and sinuses if left unprotected.
So even that though didn’t make my feet cold. I hate having cold feet. It’s misery of miseries.
Frank was telling me about a radio guy, Steak Shapiro, about when he got cold feet at a football game, as Frank had heard it on the radio today or yesterday or something. It was funny. Kind of like he turns into a totally different person. Yeah, I know about that firsthand, myself! I have the reverse in hot weather. Above 75 and I melt fast and become a totally different person.
So it’s important to have warm feet. Sometime in the last week or so there was a “cold” day and my feet got really cold. I had to go get in bed for a long time. Even then, they didn’t get warm enough. So finally Frank took us out to Barnes and Noble to read and be warm for the evening. I had to get my feet warm first though. If I have cold feet in shoes, then the shoes HURT horribly. Frank says he doesn’t experience that. Hmph. Figures. I do. It feels like any shoe I put on is pinching my toes, too tight, even if they aren’t, which none of my shoes really do anyway.
I had to fill the tub with hot water and soak my feet before getting ready to leave. I could have done that before, but really, having cold feet turns off your mind as to all the possible ways to get out of that predicament. Only the “lets go out” speech from hubby turned out that answer in my brain. Oh yeah, soak them!
Ah, it was so nice. It took awhile to get them there, but eventually they were warm. I dried them off and hopped in bed again to be sure to keep them warm for a bit, then put on socks under the covers and my boots. That did it. I was fine.
It’s funny how cold feet get. Just that once they are cold, they are cold. It’s a horrible cycle. In the summer my feet can’t get too hot. Only my neck and head can. It’s really my neck, the thermostat at the base of the head in the back. It’s the place that regulates temps. So that place though doesn’t make my feet warm in the Winter. Funny how it is. Cold feet make me nuts. Shut me down. But it doesn’t mean my whole body is cold. Just my feet is enough.
In the Hot Summer, it’s my neck that has to be fooled into being cooler to not freak my body out. If I can’t have ice or a cold bag or can of something on there, I go wacko, get mean easy, etc. My cold feet thing is that I can get mean easy, but it’s more or less that I can’t handle stress as easy, and I can’t function right. In Summer I can handle NO stress at all. It’s like I live for cool evening breezes, and on some days, there are none of those.
So here I sit in a chilly house, fine and warm, next to a fireplace fire, and I’m thinking of the miseries of Summer. 🙄
I say that cold can be dealt with, there are ways to get warm. But heat cannot always be dealt with. Put clothing on to keep warm, layers, wool, silk. You can have silk and other things on for wearing in the heat, but they don’t KEEP you cool when it’s 80 degrees. They only feel alright on your skin and your brain whigs out from the heat.
So Summer, Air Conditioning is a friend. But became a foe in our home when my allergies went through the roof in 2003. Turned it off and things cleared up. 😯
So since then we’ve lived au’naturel. It’s fine, like today, if we used the air system, it’d be a useless Heat Pump, and that doesn’t work once near freezing, it can’t pull any heat out of the air. So we’ve learned to live in a cooler house during the Winter and it’s mostly fine. Cloudy days are the worst when it’s cooler. What’s cold in this house? Inside, below 50 is cool. 60 is really nice.
Autumn, and Spring, are lovely in a natural air house. Nighttime in the Summer can be grand, but some nights are just stagnant and worse than that. Mostly though, in Georgia, Summer is hot, but nights are cooler, cool enough to be what gets one through the day, just to live for the night. 🙂
Those days are coming. It’s January. It’ll just be another month before some of the Spring flowers begin to come out. Trees will start to swell their buds, and the air will sing with the coming of Spring. That pulse can be felt in January, yes even on such a cold January day. 🙂
We are an Early Spring region. A Long Growing Season region. A very temperate climate. Well, except for Summer. See the lovely year round stuff keeps us Georgians happy to put up with Summer, for the lovely Spring, Wondrous Winter, and Awesome Autumn. Summer is bad and good. Thunderstorms are great. Melting hot days are not. But those nights are worth it. Ceiling fans are useful, but not worth a dime on those hot stagnant nights.
Oh what a wierd post this is. I had no objective to write this stuff, it just flowed out. You know how opposites attract, and extremes compare, etc. 😉
Well anyhow, cold days like this are nice to sleep in on. And that we did today. We did miss church, and that’s easier to do on such a cold day, since staying in the house at all means we need to burn a fire. Besides that I’m sniffly allergic these last couple of days, and that’s miserable to go anywhere like that. Cold cold and baths for everyone didn’t happen on Saturday night, and Sunday morning was too cold and we’d just have had 20 minutes to get ready and go …
So day of this and we are tuckered out and just stayed home with the homefires burning. Nice, but we do miss going to church on such times.