The Importance of Layering!

It is gorgeous here today as I am looking out the back south window at a ribbon of sun remaining on the horizon. Ah, to be able to have the sky open all day. That is the wonderful part. The not so great part is trying to keep warm and I am in my house. I have been in my kitchen for the last part of the afternoon, cleaning from this weekend, and am having a bit of trouble standing in socks on the linoleum floor for more than a few minutes. The floor is an ice pond that I can't avoid. Even better, I heard my washing machine start urring and when I went out into the room that adjoins our house to check. I smelled the burning engine. I think it is dead. Our sheets that I stripped this morning are in a dead washing machine full of freezing water. Nice. I would now have to plunge my hands into the glacial water to retrieve and wring them. It felt like my entire body was immersed in this machine. I took a shower after this in order to recharge my limbs. As I was in the shower, I noticed the last two toes on my right foot were purple and entirely numb. This reminded me of Unity St., a place we lived when first married. We refer to the places we have lived by the name of the street. We have a cat and a dog, so finding a place to rent was always difficult. Well, we found one in Bellingham, on Unity St. It was a part of what used to be a functioning plantation, with a substantial brick house, (now some sort of business) servant's quarters, and a stable for horses. We lived up the stairs at the very top of the servant's quarters. When we moved in January, the weather resembled this coldness, but not even close to the low 20's with endless days of snow. Our first morning there, when jumping out from under heavy quilts to use the bathroom, that had been transformed from a closet, we found our shampoo had turned from liquid to solid. It was completely frozen. I wouldn’t be washing my hair today. Oh, the memories. Our current house parallels Unity St. on certain levels like cradling the cold, but at least there is a heating system so that there is actually heat to escape. When we first began to rent our house from my husband’s grandparents we were adding a mirror in the bathroom and the screws went directly from the bathroom wall into my daughter, Camille's bedroom. No space in between to hold insulation, plenty of space for whirling air. We have become very good at layering; hats, wool socks, and slippers are a necessity for arctic living.