Baby, It's Cold Outside!

There appears to be some kind of cold snap going on across the country. The number of tongues frozen to light poles in Wisconsin has reached a record high. Here on Horton Lane, where all of the houses use passive solar heating (alas, I do not exaggerate) we are freezing our tuchises off. (I had to look up tuchis. I had no idea how to spell it, even though I say it all the time. I'm just a yiddish copping shiksa.)

Anyway, here's the deal. We do have backup heating, but it's those electric baseboards. They don't do much, but cost a small fortune, so we really don't use them at all. This makes our electric bills blissful. Less than $80 a month for all of our electricity and heating needs (there's no gas line into the house). But the kitchen, when I came home this evening, was 50 F. It will most likely be down to 45 F in the morning. These are the times when you can't cook with the olive oil, because it has already solidified in the bottle. Oh yeah, it's bad.

All of this long-winded verbage was to justify why I am still not making cookies. The replacement gear did come today, so I don't have that excuse anymore. But the mixer is still in a million pieces on the counter. Actually, turning on the oven might be just what that kitchen needs. But no, I say. Not tonight. I am tired of my teeth chattering. I am tired of wearing my wool coat around the house. (I am wearing it right now.) I am tired of living in one room. At least it's the computer room, heh heh. Oh sun, couldn't you move just a little bit closer?! In the meantime, I am going to don my jammies and read more Julie & Julia, curled up in my bed. The cookies will just have to wait. Sigh.


Okay, Tom has just informed me that there are not enough pictures on my site as of late. What? Aren't you all just enthralled with my prose? Well, to humor you I have included a picture of me in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, summer of 2002, to really give you the sense of how cold I am feeling right now. I'm the one in the middle. Doesn't it just look bone chilling? Believe me, it was. In eleven straight days, I never thawed out. The shower at the end of that trip was one of the most precious, satisfying, delightful gifts I have ever received. I would've cut off my pinky in exchange. But back to the picture. Perhaps you are wondering what the heck we are all doing. Well... we had spotted some young carribou who had never seen a human before. They looked at us like we were space aliens. (Kang and Kronos, if you're a Simpsons fan.) We thought we would put them at ease by pretending we were carribou, too. Our arms are supposed to be a rack of antlers, get it? It didn't really work, but it was fun trying.