The Cold

I have been trying to figure out why anyone would build a city in a place that has bitter cold winters. My little city was founded sometime in the 1800s by pioneers with wagons and handcarts and that sort of thing. It has bitter cold winters. I sometimes sit huddled in my fleece robe with the furnace cranked up and think about those early pioneer settlers. I betcha anything -- anything -- that they kept asking themselves over and over and over "Why didn't I finish the trek to California?" "Why didn't I just keep walking to California?" "Why oh why oh why didn't I finish the dang trek and make it to California?"

Do you know when they were thinking this the hardest? Wishing it the most? I bet it was when they were out their in their little outhouses doing their thing with temperatures well below freezing. I know this is pretty crass, but I can't think of anything worse than an outhouse in winter. I guess at least there's no smell, because all the, er, stuff would be frozen.

Oh Pioneers, why didn't you keep going to California? And why didn't you found my university there? So when I took my current job, I would have moved to California?

These days, the sun doesn't rise until about 9:00 am here. We leave our house, on foot, to walk Jonathan to school at about 8:15 am. Over my underwear, I wear long pants. An undershirt. A regular shirt. A sweater. A down coat over that. A pair of lined windbreaker pants over my regular pants. Socks. Another pair of knee high socks. Shoes. Scarf. Lined mittens. A hat. Ear muffs.

Jonathan's school is only 3/4 of a mile away. But by the time we get there my face is frozen solid red. Tim's beard is covered in attractive snot icicles. We wave goodbye to Jonathan, then Tim and I turn around and walk back. At home, Tim wants to kiss me goodbye with his snot icicle face. (I'm taking goodbye kisses from now on before we go out in the cold.) Then I get on my bike and ride 1.5 miles to work. In all, I'm only outside for an hour or so. Those pioneers may have spent that much time in those outhouses of theirs, depending, I guess, on how much fiber they had in their diets. But it's painful. The cold, I mean, and not just the fiber.

In related news, a guy came and fixed our fireplace fan this morning. We've been using the fireplace in the basement, and it has been amazing. The fan blows the heat out of the chimney into the family room. Walking into the family room is like walking into a wall of cozy and warm, the likes of which you haven't felt since August. Wow.

You know, pioneers didn't have fireplace fans. Their heat went straight up the chimney. And then slowly drifted west to California. They were insane to build a city here.