Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2002-01-05 - 2:20 p.m.

I'm a Miami Girl at Heart

I don't do well with cold.

My house is cold. I run the forced-air heating, but it doesn't seem to do a whole lot. I remember being disappointed that the heater vents were in the ceiling in this house...I remembered the floor vents of my childhood, and how my sister and I would stand over them in our long nightgowns, impersonating hot air balloons, and getting very warm.

I am not limber enough to do this with ceiling vents.

A couple years ago all my windows were replaced with double-pane glass. It was supposed to help. It doesn't. It's still cold in here. My kitchen is the second-coldest room, even with the refrigerator putting out heat. I don't like going in there. I don't mind washing the dishes, though, because I can put my hands in the hot water.

My bedroom is the coldest room. This is okay, because I don't spend a lot of time in there unless I'm under the quilts. I could put insulated curtains on the sliding-glass doors, but I'd lose the wonderful sense that my bed is in an overgrown garden. I trade a little cold for the view.

When I'm cold, I draw in, which of course doesn't make me any warmer. I don't want to move around the cold house much. Less movement leads to less heat generated leads to more cold leads to less movement. I KNOW this, but it's very hard to want to get up and vacuum, even though I know it would warm me up AND contribute to the household wa.

In the apartment I had fifteen years ago, I had a gas wall-heater. My spot was on the floor in front of that heater. That's where I lived in the winter. I didn't sit at the kitchen table and I didn't sit on the couch; I sat on the floor in front of my heater.

When I'm very very cold, as I am today. I sneak in and take a bath. I haven't a bath in my bathroom; someone decided that adults don't take baths, so I got a shower. It's a good shower, a large one with seats and shelves and everything, but it isn't a bath. If you're really chilled, you can't get warm if some portion of your anatomy is sticking out of the hot water.

Of course, now even in the bathtub some portion of my anatomy sticks out from the hot water. I have to choose which one it will be. I rotate. Knees up, shoulders under. Knees under, shoulders up. I remember being short enough to immerse completely, as my youngest still can.

I have to sneak in because that's the girls' bathroom. They take the baths around here. Before I get in, I remove the plastic mermaids and a sodden Barbie or two. Then I dump out the cups and plastic pitchers of cold water that have been left on the side of the tub, "saved" for some reason or another. Then I wring out the washcloths and the sponges from the bottom of the tub. I make sure there is some sort of usable soap that doesn't foam out of a can nor smell like grape bubble gum. I get my rose gardenia essential oil from down off the top shelf where the kids can't get into it, and I get a paperback novel that isn't borrowed (in case of accidental dunkings).

The girls' bathroom doesn't have a heat lamp. Not having enough money nor gumption to install one, I bought a metal brooder lamp and hung that from the ceiling. It works. If you saw the wallpaper in that bathroom, chosen by the previous owners, you would understand that decoration is not a bathroom priority at Chez Kath. A brooder lamp is just fine.

So that's what I'm going to go do now. If I can't stand over the heater vent in a long flannel gown, I am going to go de-Barbie the bathtub, turn on my brooder lamp, grab my mystery novel and go immerse until my fingers and toes wrinkle up. It beats the hell out of vacuuming.

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