If the furnace goes out today, I just want to say it’s been nice, because that’ll be the end of me. The rescue team will probably find me frozen solid in my chair at this keyboard, icicles dangling from my eyebrows like Jack Torrence. I’m not even going to try to get to the corner store and hang out there all day because frankly I doubt I’d survive to walk the quarter-mile or so.
As usual, I’m exaggerating a tiny bit. It’s cold here today, about two below zero this morning, but not as cold as it gets in, say, Fairbanks, Alaska, which I hear is a lovely place but one in which I don’t think I’d survive for long. Cold weather is not my friend. I cannot abide feeling cold. I don’t know how I’ve lived in Wisconsin for as long as I have. Come to think of it, I don’t know why I didn’t move to Arizona after I retired from the military, when I had the chance to be warm for the rest of my life.
Actually, I do know why: Because Arizona is hot, not warm, and if there’s one thing I can’t abide more than being cold, it’s being hot. I’m comfortable only when it’s about seventy-two degrees out, sunny, and maybe forty percent humidity. The problem with my condition is, the ideal place for me to live is a terrarium.
This Is Drivel 