It's been a BRUTALLY cold week in Rochester, but that hasn't kept the boys inside. They go outside to play a game that they call "Lateral," which looks to be similar to what my brothers and I called "Kill the Carrier" when we were kids. I sit inside and watch them from my desk with hands at wildly different temperatures.
My hands are at different temperatures because the Library turns into an icebox when there is any kind of westerly wind up. One of my hands, tucked into my bathrobe, stays reasonably warm. My right hand, holding a pen and writing at my desk, is a block of ice.
It was so cold yesterday that when I went for a run in the morning I couldn't feel my feet as I ran through the snow on the sidewalk. I did notice that something on my left foot felt wet once I came inside. "That's odd," I thought "because these shoes are just a few weeks old and I don't think they have any holes yet." I found out when I took my sock off later that it was blood. I never felt my one toenail cutting open the neighboring toe because I didn't have any feeling in my foot at the time. (It hurt plenty afterwards.)
I had a look at the insulation on the original structure of our house when I was perched up on a ladder last summer, installing a vent fan above the bathroom. It turns out that there really isn't any insulation. There is a layer of aluminum siding that went on at some point in the 80s, and then there is the original cedar shake siding. And that's it.
We haven't been completely remiss about weatherproofing over the years. When we were first in the house we qualified for a free New York State energy efficiency upgrade that basically paid for two contractors to seal every crevice in the basement with an ugly expanding spray-foam. I've caulked, sealed, and patched various windows and rotten wood spots over the years. And this fall I secured the two dryer vents on the western side of the house, discovering in the process that what stood between the vent opening and the inside of our house was...absolutely nothing. (A mouse or two also discovered that this fall, which was what led to the re-sealing. The mice subsequently discovered my mousetrap collection.)
None of this bothers James, who came downstairs this morning in a t-shirt and shorts. It was 9 degrees outside.
"Aren't you cold?"
"Not really."
And apparently he wasn't. I made him put on a coat before we got in the van, but he took it off once we were driving.
"I'm too hot."
They do look pretty chilly by the time they come in from playing Lateral/Kill the Carrier/Tackle Each Other Into Snowbanks, but I sometimes wonder if this is just an act to plead for hot chocolate. (It's a good act. They always get hot chocolate.)
Next week is supposed to be a bit warmer--a balmy 20 degrees of most of the week, if my weather app proves to be reliable. (It hasn't proven to be very reliable recently.) I will be ready for warmer weather. But there is a small part of me, perhaps the part that fathered James, that doesn't hate the cold of January. It's good to feel like you're alive and fighting when the world has turned so frosty and that it feels intentionally hostile.
But I'm not going to go so far as to start wearing shorts.
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