For the past three days, we’ve been in the deep freeze, with temperatures below zero even at noon under sunny skies. The floor in front of the kitchen door was so chilly, I rolled up towels and stuffed them against the crack in a vain effort to block the cold. When my husband saw my handiwork, he said I’d become my mother. Well sure, she used that old trick all the time, and sure, I vowed never to be like her, but that was before it was -18 two nights running. So it’s no wonder that last night as we lay shivering in bed, despite the extra layer of blankets (except during several hot flashes when I threw off all the covers, but you don’t want to hear about that), another one of Mom’s cold-busting efforts came to mind.
During her childhood, her dad gave her some of the wool sheared from the sheep on their Minnesota farm. She and her mom cleaned and carded the wool and made it into a batting which they covered with muslin. Together they tied the layers together, sewed the edges, and stored it away until it was needed. Maybe Mom used it in her unheated bedroom in the drafty farmhouse where she grew up. But we didn’t use it in the house where I grew up. By then, central heating had rendered the wool batting obsolete.
At least until this cold spell hit and kept hitting. During one moment of frigid desperation, I considered driving over to Mom’s, hauling the batting to our house and huddling beneath it. But it was too cold to travel in pajamas, so I shivered away until a hot flash came to my rescue, but you don’t want to hear about that.
This afternoon, life is improving. The temperature is above zero, the central heating’s doing find, and the wool batting is once again obsolete. If only I could say the same thing about my hot flashes. But you don’t want to hear about that.
