It's cold in them thar hills!

Who'da thunk it would get cold here in the mountains of the American South? It's not as cold as Michigan of course, but I'm still a California girl, dammit! It's been getting down to the 20's sometimes, even with a couple flurries of snow. (The snow doesn't stick at all, or even make much of a slush, but I can definitely see tiny flakes falling.)

What makes it worse is that our house is heated by propane. Recently the propane ran out, even though we had just put $270 worth into the tank 20 days ago. The source of this rapid use is still under investigation. But we bought a coupla space heaters and have been working on winterizing (read: shrink-wrapping) the windows, and that's helped. We managed to get the propane refilled, but there were a few days when it was VERY cold in this house, especially at 6am en route from the bed to the shower before work.

Also, we have hardwood floors. You might say, ooh how nice, that's so fancy! But really, they just turn into giant ice cubes that you have to walk on. We already had a rug at the foot of the bed, but that was useless for anything else. So thanks to some lucrative ebaying, we bought a new rug for the foot of the couch, and one for the kitchen that makes up a majority of that freezing stretch from the bedroom to the bathroom. Also, Jay bought me some toasty new slippers as an early xmas present. (Though I'm pretty sure he was just sick of hearing me complain about freezing feet.)

Although the one upside of the freezing house is that the cat was more loving. He would sit on our laps every chance he got, and even crawl under the covers with us at night. When we bought the first space heater (an oscillating one on a tower), he would position himself conveniently on the couch so he got the maximum heat. Then we picked up another smaller cheaper heater that sits on the floor. The point of that was to help the floor become a floor again and less of an ice cube, but the cat has co-opted the heater for his own personal use. He sits directly in front of it at all times. He's learned that he's not allowed to actually *touch* the heater, but he gets pretty damn close. Since the heater isn't as powerful as it could be, it doesn't seem like his fur will catch on fire, but I still make him move once in a while.

And of course all this coldness is reeeeeally making me miss sunny California. Still considering moving back there at some point, but what would I do with all these heaters?



Also: if you order from my etsy shop quick, you can get delivery by xmas!