Survival.
February 13th, 2008 by trancejen
Thanks to our very recent fire, there is no longer a space heater in the TranceCave.
Thanks to this lack of space heaterage, I no longer have even the most minuscule molecule of heat available for me to cling to at night.
It is colder than a well-digger’s ass in the TranceCave, provided that said well-digger is wearing thong panties and resides in Reykjavik, Moscow, or some Godforsaken city in Antarctica.
This makes mornings a little more difficult than I anticipated, and I am not a morning person to begin with.
Last night I, the always-naked sleeper, finally succumbed to the frigid chill and went to bed wearing three layers, woolen socks, and a thick, nubby sweater. I plugged into my iPod, cranked it up, and drifted off under four blankets to the distinctive sounds of the latest Tom Waits album.
Waking up in the morning to a screaming Little Stevie Wonder (I have got to change that CD) and a bone-biting temperature was a jolt, to say the least. I could see my funky breath, not that I wished to see anything at all.
The bitter wind chill in my room was making me wish I was still fast asleep and dreaming dreams of thin limbs, taxless cigarettes, free Diet Coke and all the other sweet things that pervade my sleeping hours.
The rude morning frost felt horrible. My exposed face was icy cold, and I quickly burrowed underneath the stiff blankets for solace. My God! What in the holy hell had I been thinking, sleeping down there? It was sixty-eight degrees upstairs - surely I could have shoved the J-Man into a drawer or something and had a nice twin loft all to myself.
It was lakefront cold.
I now knew the sick, desperate fear of the main character in Jack London’s To Build a Fire. I was too cold to move. Would I ever make it out? Would I be found in the TranceCave, frozen to death without having touched up my roots? If so, would my mother actually fly in the face of all that was right and proper and hold an open casket??
Good Lord.
I had left my cigarettes and lighter upstairs and I longed for that feeble flame. Had there been a cat in bed with me, I surely would have gutted it for warmth using an earring.
Thankfully the cats escaped certain death due to the fact that it is so fucking cold down in the TranceCave they will no longer keep company with me.
My mother, warm in the overland, is besieged with cats. Her bed has turned into a warm, afghan-covered, cat sanctuary while mine is a desperately bleak pile of frozen quilting fit for neither man nor beast.
Obviously I made it upstairs and lived to tell the tale, but I am seriously not exaggerating when I tell you that you could freeze your balls off in that basement. For this reason I haven’t allowed Bullshit down there since the fire. The testes, already lower in temperature than the rest of the body, would not last five seconds in the Cave. Nor would a bare toe. One toe placed on the icy TranceCave floor, and that’s a toe you’ll never see again, my friend. That is an ex-toe.
So why am I sleeping down there and not upstairs on the lumpy but warm sofa?? The lumpy but warm sofa hurts my back, and I suppose that I would rather freeze than hurt my back. Either way, I have something to whine about, so I may give the sofa a shot tonight.
I have one comfort: At least my case of Diet Coke stays cold in the basement. I don’t need to put any in the fridge. Would you like someplace to store your beer? I can most definitely help you out.
As a result of my dwelling in this ridiculous frozen tundra I am sick. My throat is swollen, I have snot running through every orifice, and I am starting to sound very like my raspy friend Tom Waits. This is perfectly timed for Valentine’s Day, a holiday in which I have historically been sick, a romantic sort of occasion during which I once committed a post-coital attack of vomiting so severe that my ex-fiancee was absolutely horrified and probably wanted to run like the wind.
Snot and romance: the perfect pairing. Just a moment, darling, allow me to snort up some of this mucus so that we may continue our tryst. If I should vomit, consider it a sign of my deepest affections. Thank you so much.
Valentine’s Day should be celebrated during the summer months, not smack in the middle of February when every damn body is fighting the flu or a cold or some kind of nasty fucking sinus problem.
Bullshit and I are going to be spending the day shopping and going to the movies and going to dinner. We rarely get to spend the whole day together because of his work schedule and my J-Man schedule, so it’ll be nice.
It’s a Hallmark holiday and it’s so commercial and DeBeers is Satan and flowers die and candy is bad for you and yeah blah blah whatever - it’s all true, everything they say, but any holiday in which I get presents is fine with me.
I’m shallow. I’m cool with that. I consider myself to be a strong and accomplished person based solely on the fact that I have survived the wilds of the basement.
Happy Wednesday.
For-Tart wrote on 02/13/08 at 9:46 am :
That is the rugged spirit all men secretly want in the love of their lives. Illness be damned, we WILL have sex.
trancejen wrote on 02/13/08 at 9:57 am :
Thank you. I feel that I am a hardy woman, like one of those pioneer bitches.
Miche wrote on 02/13/08 at 10:58 am :
Thought J had bunk beds? Won`t he share his room with you, at least until the thaw?
trancejen wrote on 02/13/08 at 11:01 am :
He has a loft bed, it had a bunk under it but we took it down to make space in the room.
Miche wrote on 02/13/08 at 11:14 am :
oh well… think of all the extra calories you`ll burn trying to keep warm!
fredlet wrote on 02/13/08 at 11:44 am :
got a sleeping bag? (need one? they are cheap at Tarzhay) get one rated to 20 degrees or 40 might work. and wear a wool hat (a la Green Bay) half your heat escapes through your head.
Hostrauser wrote on 02/13/08 at 3:28 pm :
After reading your basement story I feel I should mention that I have sick fascination with keeping track of the winter weather in Yakutsk, Russia, the coldest city of 200,000+ people in the world. It pretty much stays below zero non-stop from November through March, and I’ve seen the city have a two-week stretch where the temperature never rose above -40. Dunno if that will help you feel a little bit warmer today, but hey.
Nightowl wrote on 02/13/08 at 6:46 pm :
Read a fantastic book called “Skinny Bitches”. Helpful hints to lose weight (I need all the help I can get) with humor, sarcasm, and a House personality. Its by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnounin, check it out.
http://books.google.com/books?id=4Jbe0GLeU_EC&dq=skinny+bitches&pg=PP1&ots=z5NKg5NZ2Q&sig=EagvotqpErU-UFveS9rGVWLilK4&hl=en&prev=http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=skinny+bitches&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail#PPP1,M1
Also, my boss just went to Chicago for a funeral. She said it was so cold, she doesn’t care who dies next, shes not going in the winter again.
trancejen wrote on 02/13/08 at 6:50 pm :
I feel ever so slightly better.
Melanie wrote on 02/13/08 at 11:10 pm :
Hey, I knit and I’m a Lady of Leisure at the moment with a shitload of yarn — lemme know if you want some custom-made socks or a soft killer shawl to keep you warm.
whyme63 wrote on 02/14/08 at 8:11 am :
“It’s a Hallmark holiday and it’s so commercial and DeBeers is Satan and flowers die and candy is bad for you and yeah blah blah whatever…”
Which is why the Spouse and I say it with DVDs. I got a Colin Firth romcom, and he got two more Steve McQueens for his collection.
(Hey. It’s our twenty-fifth Valentine’s day together. Romance no longer comes heavily into play.)
Kari wrote on 02/14/08 at 9:17 am :
Happy Valentines Day Jen! I hope you feel better and have a great day today!
Two words babe - Electric Blanket.
Our bedroom is the farthest room from the furnace and it gets down to 55 at night which is probably balmy compared to the trance cave, but it really helps. They say mothers will kill to protect their young, but I, I will kill to protect my ‘lectric blanket.
whyme63 wrote on 02/14/08 at 3:35 pm :
D’oh. I was going to mention the electric blanket earlier. I see Kari beat me to it, but I will add this: When you have an electric blanket–you can pre-heat your bed. I usually turn mine on high about an hour before bedtime, and then turn it down to a more reasonable level when I’m ready to hit the warm, toasty sheets.
Kungfukitten wrote on 02/15/08 at 5:06 pm :
I’ll be transporting my wine collection into your basement this weekend. Feel free to drink half of it as I’m no longer able to drink on this damn Methotrexate.