C-c-c-collllddd; F-f-f-freeeezing!!!

Well, the title says it all. I had really planned on writing this post yesterday morning when the sharp memory of the acute cold was still as fresh as a bouquet of Himalayan snow in my mind. However, life got ahead of me - or should I say, work got ahead of me? All documentation stuff... productivity info, more productivity info and a very strange satellite phone whose efficacy in non-satellite, sub-stratospheric zones needed to be tested and needed to be tested NOW! So, yes... work got a little bit ahead of me... :) However, the biting cold was not forgotten. Luckily, it was not quite so irritable a chill today morning, but it was cold enough that I was determined to post this little note and get the whines out of my system :)

So, getting back to the topic at hand... Day before yesterday: I had been told by a minimum of 3 sources that the temperature was going to reach a low of 1 degree centigrade that night. If this had been 2 or 3 years ago, in a place where centralized heating was not just a dream but a realized success, this would not have made my bone marrow squirm. But, squirm it did, because I very soon realized that my poor 7 fin oil heater was not robust enough to do anything but wheeze faintly in the chill vapor of my frozen breath if the temperature should reach this close to zero. Upon the heels of this realization, I started to mull over all the items of clothing in my dresser and figure out what would keep me warm through this abysmal night. I reached home, headed straight to my cupboard and pulled out a hoodie, a fluffy pink silky warm bathrobe with a hood, 2 pairs of woolly fluffy socks, a winter cap which would cover my ears, my flannel Aladdin style harem pants (warm!), and a thick soft warm nightshirt and put them on my quilt. Then I got into all of them; the second pair of socks going on my hands right at the end. So, you can imagine me: round and warm with a cap and the hood of my hoodie and then the hot pink hood of my bathrobe on my skull, a hoodie and bathrobe on top of my nightshirt around my torso, a fire-engine red set of harem pants with the pink bathrobe hugging my well-padded behind, purple woolly socks on my feet and purple woolly socks with rubber splats (to keep from sliding in case I suddenly took it in my head to walk on my hands) on my paws. And I took my round self and plopped under the quilt, making sure that all corners and sides of the quilt were tucked right under my cocooned self. Thus, I was quite warm throughout the cold night and laughed myself silly when I woke up and saw the sun grinning at me through my lacy curtains. It's quite beside the point that I ended up with a fever in the middle of the night and decided to sleep in in the morning. So, I woke up warm, lazy, and feeling much better and was actually able to scrunch my nose, squint, and smile when coming up for air from under my covers... Surprising how a warm night can transform a person's mood :P And the morning was filled with that fresh, dew-drop-filled cold that was just waiting to delve into one's lungs and call up pictures of snowy peaks and sun-ridden early mornings :) So all in all, not that much of a whine in this post. More of a laugh and a skip...