Total for the week: 4,335 words.
I was blindsided by something completely out of left field last week. I got a few words written on Monday, but my motivation sank into the mire on Tuesday, despite flailing myself with guilt and panic messages (as I’m already so far behind!)
Of course, Canada and parts of the United States (or even most of it) have been dealing with the polar vortex and record-breaking cold, but as I never move out of the house these days, I only paid the news heed long enough to consider if there were any extraordinary measures we must take to deal with it. As the answer was “no”, I got back to work.
To not work, as it turned out. And the reason was face-palm stupid.
My office is in the first basement of our house, which is half-buried (unlike the second basement, which is fully beneath ground level). Ever since quitting the day job, I’ve had to adjust to the fact that the basement gets colder in winter. I wear dressing gowns and slippers and socks, and when it gets really bad, I have a little space heater I can use to warm my toes. It’s not impossibly cold, mind you. It’s not like my breath fogged when I exhaled, or I got ice on my coffee. It was just a little bit cooler than upstairs, and when you’re sitting still, the chill would creep into your bones.
Sometimes it gets super cold and in years gone by, I’d take my laptop upstairs and work on the sofa. But I don’t have that luxury this year, as the laptop imploded some time ago, and I’m still accumulating funds for a new one.
It actually got noticeably colder in the basement with the vortex hanging over us, but I just wrapped up as usual and carried on. Only I got less than a day’s worth of work done before I finally realized that I was miserably cold. Too cold to write or do anything but get warm somehow.
This is where the face-palm comes into it. I bitched to my partner about how miserable I was.
So he turned and stepped up on a chair and opened the two furnace vents in the ceiling that had been shut for years!
By the end of the weekend just gone, I had discarded my dressing gown, and it is now warmer down in the basement than it is on the main floor, where the heat battles against huge picture windows that shed it.
I’m coming up on twenty-five years living in Canada this October, and I’m still not used to checking for closed vents. It was December 2015 when I quit my day job. I’ve been freezing for over five years, for no good reason….
I’m writing this post the day before it goes out and I already know I’m back on track. I’ve got some catching up to do, but I’m no longer resisting having to sit here and write. Yay!!
t.