Life with Liz: Warming up

I love winter, love the cold and love the snow. However, these past two weeks have done me in, and I’m ready to say “uncle.” When it is so cold that it hurts to breathe, I will finally admit that I understand why people complain. Also adding to my disgust with my favorite season is the heating bill.

As the temps kept dropping, and as I am notoriously cheap, we did the sensible thing. We consolidated into the main rooms of the house.

Since we already pay PPL for the lights everyone leaves on, and the open refrigerator door that everyone stands in front of, and the repeated hot showers that certain people take because they couldn’t remember to use soap the first time, I really don’t feel like being on the hook for heating rooms that people aren’t in 75 percent of the time.

The boys’ bedroom was the first to go. Since they’re at the end of a long hallway, they’re cut off from the main source of heat, the coal stove in our living room. Typically, turning the baseboard heat on when they were ready for bed kept it comfortable enough without breaking the bank.

The extra low temps last weekend made this process futile, though, and rather than run the heat all day, we just let them bunk down in the living room. They were only too happy to assemble the couch cushions, blankets, and their sleeping bags and make a night of it.

E was the next to fall. Her first move, though, was out of her room and into ours, her presence made known as she jammed her icy cold feet into my back, while her chilly fingers slapped the Wonderful Husband. Sleeping with E usually results in black and blue marks, an occasional blood drawing, and one or two well-placed throat punches.

She also enjoys kicking ALL the covers off once she reaches her optimal temperature. Eager to avoid a hospital visit, and freezing to death in my sleep, I persuaded her to head downstairs with the boys.

She would only go if I went, so I agreed, as long as she slept on one couch, and I could sleep on the other. At this point, the Wonderful Husband pointed out that it was ridiculous to try to heat the upstairs for one person, and he relocated to the bedroom previously known as the living room, as well.

Since we were out of couches, and 40-something-year-old backs don’t do so well on floors, out came the aerobed. This was the point where I should have realized we went too far. But I didn’t, and now I have serious doubts as to whether I will ever be able to evict everyone and chase them back to their bedrooms.

E and I had the occasion to be away for a night, and when we came home, the living room had been transformed. One of the boys, and I’m still not sure which one of the three of them it was, and they’re not confessing, realized that they have a bunch of tanned deer and bear hides just hanging around. They then put that together with the informative talk they heard when we visited the Wampanoag village at Plymouth Plantation at Thanksgiving.

The Native Americans explained how they used layers of hides to keep warm, even in the coldest temperatures. My industrious kids dug out all the hides and covered their makeshift beds with them.

By the time I got home, the living room, still festooned with Christmas decorations, and now covered in hides of all sorts, looked like Grizzly Adams crashed through a Christmas window at the Mall.

Even worse, the three of them were cocooned up in their sleeping bag/aerobed/hide combination and refused to come out, because “it was the warmest they’ve ever been.” This made Monday morning really fun, when no one wanted to get up for work or school. I stopped short of dumping a bucket of water on their heads, but not by much.

Early dismissal from school found the three kids holed up again, with their homework, their Kindles, and flashlights stowed away. I suspect there may have been some edibles in there, too.

While the rest of the living area isn’t really THAT cold, apparently, the extreme warmth inside their blanket/hide forts made coming out for anything, even food and the bathroom, a misery. Part of the problem is that it’s so warm in their forts that they can strip down to their skivvies, and are just a little too lazy to get fully dressed again to come back out.

I have to say, bunking in around the fire in the coal stove, together as a family, takes me back to our summer camping trips, and it was nice to end the day together, giggling about funny stories and talking about our plans for tomorrow. The laughter and drowsiness are contagious. So are the burps and farts and tantrums.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.