The End of February

Jezumcrow, I am so sick of this winter. We've all had enough of snow, cold temps and gray cloudy days. Predicted temperature for tonight is zero. A big fat ZERO! And then tomorrow night into Saturday morning a "few inches" of snow is predicted. Someone please tell me just how many inches are a few?

Maybe composing in red will help. After all, action follows thought, and if I think bright red, happy thoughts, maybe I'll feel better.

Lots of colors available. Blue is my favorite, though not this particular shade. I don't have the patience today to play around with the colors offered. This will have to do.

My husband has gone to camp. I could have gone, but I don't do his type of camp. It's in a very isolated area of the Adirondacks, accessible only with snowmobile or boat. That's OK, but once there, there is no running water inside. There is no flushing toilet. There is no electricity. There is a hand pump outside for water. There is an outhouse, which by definition is outside.. LOL. There is a generator if they want lights. There is a lot of cold and snow. If it's going to be zero here tonight, it will be below zero up there. He and a friend have gone to do some snowmobiling. Yuck! I'm not a friend of things that make a lot of noise, not to mention it's cold just standing still. Imagine what it's like racing along the trails of the Adirondacks?

He returns late Sunday afternoon. I'll keep the home fires burning, making sure that this 216-year old house doesn't fall down in protest of the continued cold. The house has no insulation. Its frame is such that, literally, there is no room between the inside walls and the original clapboard for insulation. It's a big old house -- nine rooms with big hallways on the first and second floors -- with no insulation. The oil heating bill for the coldest month of the year is more than my total gas heating bill was for my two-bedroom apartment.

The one saving grace, as minor as it may seem, are the radiators. We have old fashioned iron radiators that generate heat long after the furnace has turned off. It's a wonderful feeling to plunk one's butt down on a radiator and feel immediate heat, which slowly rises upward to other body parts. It gives me the same feeling of comfort as a good macaroni and cheese does!

And now I'm smiling from thinking about the small comfort of instant heat. Didn't somebody say that if one looks hard enough, one can find the good in anything? Seems to be true.

Life changes - A year ago I was packing and moving from a two-bedroom apartment to this nine-room house with a heating bill that touches on a thousand dollars a month in the dead of winter.