Six More Weeks

I did not like Punxsatawny Phil's prediction this past Monday ~ 6 more weeks of winter.

I am weary of this frigid Siberian cold.

A busy morning of packing and cleaning did nothing ~ absolutely nothing ~ to warm up my freezing body. Where's a hot flash when I need one?

Yup, I actually did some work this morning.

I packed 5 boxes in the workout room, most of them containing Neil's power and hand tools. I also packed a 6th box containing CDs and Windows XP software.

Also, I cleaned out and organized the electrical closet in the workout room. And I did a load of laundry.

However, even after all this activity, I still could not get warmed up.

Finally weary of being cold, I went upstairs where I could get warmed up.

But even there, my body was having trouble generating some heat.

So, after not finding any relief while reading, I decided to crawl under the covers to nap, even though I did not feel at all sleepy.

Under the covers I shivered, until finally, after about an hour or so, I managed to drift off into a blissful and cold-oblivious nap where I was a super-hero-type character in a Star Trek-type dream.

I got awoken from my slumber by Ariana's cell phone conversation. She was not aware that I was sleeping.

Well, I may as well have gotten up at that point. It was close to the time to feed the animals. And I figured that I would make some tapioca as well as my dinner, which was a furnace-stoking oatmeal and tapioca concoction of my own invention, with strawberries and passion fruit syrup.

Though not a traditional type of food for dinner, my gruel was what my body craved on this cold day, where the inside temperature downstairs was only 55 degrees.

I'm still cold, sitting in the living room with 4 layers of clothing, woolen fingerless gloves, a polar fleece hat, and a pair of thick felt-lined winter boots. (The floor was way too cold for slippers.) I even have a small electric heater going, in hopes of warming up my still cold toes.

This kind of cold does not endear me to New England. And more than ever, I am anxious to leave this northern coastal ice box to the warmer land-locked plain in western Texas.