Preparing for Polar Air

In a log cabin the logs get chilled all through in deep winter and then radiate cold -- indoors. That's my least favorite part of living here. Then I use my extreme-temp strategies. There's no gym, church, coffeehouse, library, club meeting or anywhere to escape to this year, so:

 

• Wear over-the-knee wool socks and long underwear under fleece-lined sweats, and maybe leg warmers and headgear. Indoors. I do mean it.
• On the weekend, place the closed car or other vehicle in the sun (if there's sun). Let the sun heat it up real good. Go nap in it. Warms your bones.
  
  
• Eat higher-calorie food to sustain body weight. It is not healthy to "get thin" because of cold temperatures.
  
• Curtain or shade all windows, or tablecloth your window, as I did this morning. If possible, tape the curtain's edges to the walls. Science says a curtained window loses 25 to 35 percent less heat. 
• Take vitamins and eat citrus daily. I like water with lemon. Here are lovely honeybells (cross between grapefruit and tangerine. Their skins "unzip" very neatly).
• Make and consume soups and herbal teas and lots of water. That sounds counter-intuitive. It isn't. Single-digit temps and indoor heating bring very dry air, dry air means dry and vulnerable membranes. Intersperse intake of caffeine drinks or alcohol with glasses of water.
  
• Set and patrol mousetraps because furry company is likely to creep in seeking shelter.
• For the duration, forget economizing. Use all resources.
  
• Leave a stream of water running in the slop sink so the pipes won't freeze.
• Exercise will warm cold extremities.
• Find an active, distracting household task: Ironing, long recipes, repairs and alterations, dusting, cleaning the oven or the ceiling fan blades, shoe and boot care, and so on.
• Don't complain or call people to complain that you need spring or summer. Move to Florida if Missouri's too much of a challenge for you.
  

Rock Those Booties

My mother and stepfather, appalled to see me barefoot in their 80-degree fully-carpeted house, immediately found me a pair of these, the one constant and bane of my childhood and still haunting  me in adulthood, whenever I visit and even when I don't, because they surface too in my mother's scary Christmas packages: knitted house slippers. Sometimes they're crocheted. Doesn't matter; they're all psychotically handmade by old women using synthetic and non-absorbent yarn in hideous colors, are terribly slippery to wear on smooth surfaces, never fit, and are ugly as sin. (Why the decorative ties?) They are meant to warm the feet. They prove only that it's true that feet sweat at a rate of a quart a day. And that the wearer never expects to have sex ever again.

These slippers go back, historically, to the rural and pre-sidewalk admonition "Take off your shoes at the door," but I also associate them with central and southern European immigrants and Americans from the Depression era, who were practical, poor, had skills now obsolete, and to whom "barefoot" signified not only poverty but a lack of class. I had formal knitting lessons when I was 10, at a Sears store to which I was sent by bus. I never got the knack of knitting, although forced to knit an hour a day so as to justify my mother's investment in my skill set. Thus I do know that this pair, modeled by myself (in my giraffe-print pajamas), are knitted (in stockinette stitch) rather than crocheted. I think. See you in the nursing home.

Warm Clothing, Part 2: My Second Poncho

Saw this on eBay, pre-owned, a thicker and more wintry alpaca knit than Poncho #1 (below) which I loved on sight and wear all the time, and thought, "That one is too loud and bright for you; you'll look tribal and tribal you are not; find one in a neutral color, beige or black, and longer, to cover down to the knees or so. People will look at that poncho, not at you; isn't there some kind of rule for women's clothing: People should look at the woman, not the clothes?"

Bosh. I'm not dead yet. Stunningly beautiful, soft and windproof, does not snag, $51, and so durable you will be able to cremate me in it. Wore it on a sharply chilly night and learned it is not a substitute for a down-filled or technical parka, but it awes everyone and it's a piece of clothing that inspires me to live up to it.