Echo Base Officer: “Your Tauntaun will freeze before you reach the first marker!”
Han Solo: ”Then I’ll see you in Hell!”
Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back
I just shoveled snow on my little city driveway and sidewalks for 2.5 hours. I’m going to go pass out now. We’ve been promised a one day reprieve before the snows return on Sunday.
Update: After a lovely half-hour nap, Dad Windu and I went out for another hour and a half, to help dig out a couple of the neighbors after they got home from work. This is what I love best about this neighborhood. Everyone pulls together to help each other out. After she cleaned out her driveway, the lady across the street let our neighbors use her snowblower. Another neighbor parked in our driveway while he cleaned out his drive, and then he cleaned out the elderly lady’s drive next door to him. Padawan Learner, Dad Windu, several neighbors and I have been pushing cars out of the no-pass zone at the end of our street for most of the afternoon and early evening. The plows haven’t been through yet and our road is a complete mess of roughly 15 inches of snow. I hope they can get to it tonight.
Now I’m really tired, but in that good, work-induced way. I remember often feeling like this as a kid, after working in the barn all day. I’ll sleep well tonight.
C-3PO: “I didn’t ask you to turn on the thermal heater. I merely commented that it was freezing in the princess’s chamber…”
R2-D2: [Chirps his objection]
C-3PO: “But it’s SUPPOSED to be freezing! How we are ever going to dry out her clothes, I really don’t know!”
Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back
It begins.
The winter mantra of, “Does the house feel cold to you?” has been resurrected and is in frequent use by all three of us. The thermostat is programmed to hold at 66 during the day and 62 while we’re all sleeping upstairs. Yes, that’s cooler than most houses around here, but with layering it is actually a reasonable temperature. Winter in the Great Frozen Midwest = turtleneck and a sweater.
The problem comes when we don’t put on layers, go barefoot on the wood floors or (similarly) peel off our socks when we’re tucked up under a blanket and then wander into the kitchen for a glass of water, and sit in the basement watching TV for too long.
To accommodate our individual neuroses, we’ve developed personalized responses. Padawan Learner and the two cats make a bee-line for a register cover every time the furnace kicks in and soak in all the lovely heat coming out of that particular spot. Dad Windu piles all the basement’s good blankets on top of himself while he watches TV and invites guests over as often as he can so that he has an excuse to turn the thermostat up, “…in case they get cold easily.” I make endless cups of tea and wonder why I can’t get to sleep at night.
But come spring, 62 will be considered shorts weather and we’ll turn off the furnace and leave the windows open all day and all night when it hits 45.
