February 17, 2021
One day last week, I awoke to
a cooler than usual house. At first, I thought that it was just my imagination.
After all, those first moments out of bed always seem a bit cooler, because the
bed is so warm. Also, I sleep in shorts,
because everything else I’ve ever tried has twisted around me as I move in the
bed to the point that I can’t. Sleep, that is.
But after I came out of the
bathroom, I checked the thermostat. It read 67 degrees, Fahrenheit.
Yes, I know I’m Canadian and I
should be thinking Celsius, but I can’t. I grew up with Fahrenheit and my mind
understands that scale. And yes, pounds instead of kilograms, but that is
another story.
The first thing I did after I saw
the temperature on the thermostat was to go back to the bathroom and check the
heat register. Yes, good warm air was being spewed from that vent. So then, I went
to my computer in order to check the weather outside to know what the
temperature was in my little town, according to the weather network.
I didn’t gasp but I may have
uttered a bad word or two. Minus 2 Fahrenheit but “feels like” minus 11!
I suppose it was a case of the
temperature being too cold outside for the furnace inside to keep up. By the
time I was ready to leave my work that day and head into the living room and my
recliner—just a bit after the noon hour—the temperature in the house was a bit more
tolerable. It reached 72 finally at about three in the afternoon.
Once I’d established that the
problem wasn’t a non-working furnace, I let it go. I’ve had two working doors
on my office since just before our daughter came home. One door opens to the
kitchen and the other to the entrance hallway. Directly across from that office
door is the living room. I’d previously had doorways but no doors. Two doors
means that they can both be closed and the electric fireplace in my office is
now able to heat this moderately sized, 12 x 15’ room.
My office, as well as the
kitchen, has two outside walls that have no insulation. Yes, this house is more
than a century old. In addition to a
lack of insulation, the front of our house faces east, and this office is in
the north east corner of the building. When the winds blow, they tend to blow directly
at this office. And to say that this old house is somewhat askew and full of
tiny cracks allowing myriad tiny drafts inside might be an understatement.
I’m a creature of habit. I
have a way I start my day every day, and the routine does not vary. Once I’m
ready to get to work, you can be assured that, especially in the winter, I have
my sweater on, a blanket over my lap to protect my vulnerable knees, and my
electric fireplace is working away.
There are two candelabra light
bulbs in the back of the fireplace that provide the illusion of a fire burning.
It’s really well done, and in my mind extraordinarily realistic. I sometimes
regret that the setup here has the fireplace behind me, specifically over my
left shoulder. That means I can’t sit and stare at the “flames” and allow myself
to be mesmerized. I can easily visualize myself in a comfy chair, blanket over
me, legs up on an ottoman, with a mug of hot cocoa in one hand, e-reader in the
other as I take breaks from reading to gaze at the fire…
Of course, considering the fact
that this room is where I work, maybe that’s not something the lack of
which I should regret.
This is my home and has been
since the early 1990s. Prior to moving into this house, I’d lost two houses to
house fires and was absolutely determined that I would not become attached to
this place. I was done with that, loving a place only to lose it. I think I
lasted on that resolution a good ten years. Now that our daughter is here with
us, I feel reasonably certain that here is where I’ll stay for the rest of my
life.
It's not fancy, although in
the months before our daughter came home, and in the year following that wonderful
event (and before the virus), we’d first hired someone in and then David had gotten
to work with our daughter and a few improvements were completed. We have new
ceilings in the living room and kitchen, and a new bed-sitting room upstairs.
We have a new floor in the living room, which also received new paint, curtains,
and a sofa-recliner.
We still have a few rooms that
David wants to renovate, and that may or may not happen. The good news is that
the property values in this area are rising. We have a long way to go before we
spend more than can be reclaimed in a sale—if that was a consideration for us,
which it’s not.
We are only interested in being
comfortable and happy. In other words, we are the embodiment of that old saw, “be
it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.”
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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