except for today’s balmy temps, it’s been a typical missouri winter.  cold, windy, grey.  the good part of all this is my winter break.  ahhhh, two weeks of as little academic work as possible, and no grading. the good life.

all of this commenced on monday.  ella and slept in until eight; a full two hours past my normal wake up time.  it was delightful.

and then i went downstairs.  it was fifty five degrees in my house and seventeen degrees outside.  now, just to put things into perspective, tony and i usually keep the house at around sixty seven, sixty eight.  this keeps the first floor bearable and the other two floors just right.  any warmer and our bedroom starts to feel like an oven.  this aside, that morning, even our bedroom felt cold.

i made breakfast, dressed ella in the warmest outfit she had, and put a sweater on.  then we were off to the store to buy plastic for our windows.  i use the term window loosely here; our windows are more like glass-paned screens.  they give the illusion of protection from the elements, but that’s about it.  i go to home depot first but everyone else in my neighborhood must have the same issue, because they’re sold out.  off to lowe’s then to score some plastic sheeting.  as luck would have it, the people of carondolet must have nice windows because there was plenty of sheeting for the taking.

back at the homestead, the heater had been running pretty much the entire time and it had worked its way up to fifty seven.  it was almost warm enough to take off my shoes.  almost.  i went downstairs to get a ladder to put up my plastic, and low and behold, what do i find?

a wind tunnel.  yes, a wind tunnel in my basement.  the mock basement window (that i loathe and will continue to browbeat my husband until he replaces it with a real window) with the dryer vent hook up is no longer hooked up.  this has turned the hook up into a rather impressive cannon of frigid air.

gee, i wonder why my house is so cold?  could it be because of the artic sciroco blasting into the basement????

so i hooked the dryer vent back up, prop it up with a towel (because surely that’s going to help things in the long run), get my ladder, and proceed to ensconce my windows in plastic.

by the afternoon, you’ll be glad to know, the temperature had finally reached  a toasty sixty six and the furnace stopped for a breather.  when ella went down for her nap, i took a few minutes to admire my handy work and watched the plastic bow with the eddying breeze that now only blew on the outside of my home.