So, I’m sitting outside during the winter -- because it’s warmer than
in my house. I'm enjoying the sun hitting the keyboard and toasting my
fingers as I write. It’s a great improvement to the kitchen where I
had just prepared lunch -- fingers chilly from the near-frozen water
coming from the pipes and drafty room where our gas bottle had just run
out and so our heater had quit working. Oh, I love the sun today!!!
I promised I’d write a bit about what it’s like during winter here. I’ll be using Fahrenheit temps since most of my readers are Americans. Well, here goes. First of all, let’s be clear. Winter here is not the same as winter in Northern Illinois. When I grew up, I can remember carrying warm water from the basement in our house, through knee-high snow drifts, to the barn where we had electric lamps running, just to give a drink to the animals. It would be below 0 with wind chills around -20. I’d carry those buckets and any water that would slosh out would instantly freeze to my snow pant legs. I was just talking to my sister who was telling me that that morning the ‘feels like’ temp was -20. Yep, that’s not winter here. The very coldest it might ever get is about 14 and this winter (which has been a mild one) hasn’t really gotten below 25. The coldest high temps were still in the 40s and right now, it’s in the 50s during the day and dropping below freezing at night. So, you think, what’s the big deal? That sounds like Missouri or Virginia or something. Seems like it wouldn’t be that hard to deal with that, right?
Well, it’s really not that hard for me. This winter. So far. I’m learning to not underestimate things or make them little before I’ve gotten through them. Several times. But, really, I’m doing well and even enjoying this season here. People who have been here longer than I have ask concerned questions about how I’m holding up in the cold. Granted, again, it’s been a very mild winter thus far. Still, they ask. Why would they be concerned about a Northern IL girl dealing with a Virginia winter? Let me walk you through my day.
I wake up in the morning before dawn -- usually because someone jumped on my head because they wanted to ‘snuggle.’ I check my phone to see if it’s after 5 or if I should tuck them back into their beds. As my hand leaves the blankets, I’m reminded that it’s winter. Our bedroom is probably about 45 degrees in the morning. We don’t keep a heater on through the night because it would be a waste of money with all the warm blankets we have around. So, we just hunker down between our flannel sheets and deal.
Well, after the invasion of the little people, I start to think about waking up. Then, someone has to use the bathroom, so I’ve got to grit my teeth and throw the covers off and try not to let my teeth chatter so loud they wake the rest of the house. I do my best to hurry the kiddo through potty time so we can jump back under the covers as quick as possible. There’s usually some kind of scuffle as other children wake up and jostle for position. “I want to snuggle Mama! No, Me! I get the middle! You laid by Daddy yesterday!”
Finally, 7:00 rolls around and Chris starts to think about waking up and getting breakfast for the kids. He gets up, starts adding layers, and walks downstairs, after turning off the kids’ space heater in their room. (They're not as good at staying under their covers and we don't want to have to retuck them every 2 hours.) Soon after the exodus, I muster up the courage to get out of bed and add layers. Sometime during the warm season, Chris and I agreed that he’d take care of breakfast and I could have an hour or two of quiet time before heading down to teach school. But, I’m in the room where it’s 45 and still no sunshine coming in. So, I have to muster up courage to step into the chill. I search for my socks (which I left by the hot water bottle under the covers so at least they’d stay warm.) After that, everything else I put on is also 45 degrees. My pants over my sleep pants. Brrrrr! My tunic over my thermal shirt. Brrrr! My husband’s furry Russian-style cap that I confiscated for quiet time. Brrrrr! My moon-boot-like house shoes. Brrrrr! My woolen over-tunic. Brrrrr! My scarf. Brrrrr! It usually takes a good 20 minutes for all my layers to be warmed by my body heat. Not to mention, I sit on a bean bag to read and write and pray. Again, Brrrr! But, at least I’m awake . . .
After about an hour, I’m ready to make my way to the kitchen where Chris has the gas heater going full-steam. The kitchen might be about 60 degrees. It feels hot. I take off a layer. Chris has also spent time stoking a fire in the kitchen. It heats the floor of the room next-door. How cool!!!! This might be my favorite part of winter. The rest of the house is 40 degrees or less all day long, but walk into that room and sit on the floor . . . ahhhh! It’s enough to make you want to take off another layer. In that room (which might be 65 degrees) is where most of the action happens. We periodically heat the kitchen to make it livable and then the small fire Chris makes in the morning continues to heat the side room the rest of the day.
We eat our (usually) hot breakfast and I pour my first dose of warm water onto the tea bags in my thermal cup. Those tea bags usually make me 2-4 cups of tea a day, depending on my chilliness and thirst. After this, our tutor-helper comes and I move with the kids into the side room to start school. They received these ingenious floor desks that fold out and they can sit on the warm floor to do their school work or draw pictures as we teach about history or science. We always set up desks, do their work, and then take the desks back down, since we’ll be in that room for most of the day. I make my way back to the kitchen, start the heater again if it’s too cold, and make lunch.
I set Abe and Lu up for their naps and make sure they’re covered in at least 2 thick blankets since we don’t use the space heater during the day and it’s already cooled to 50 degrees at the most and shady in their room. Jed and I head outside where the sun can warm us up a bit. As I said, it’s warmer than in the house. When Abe and Lu wake up, they usually head outside, too, and unless it's rainy, they spend the rest of the afternoon out there.
About this time, I usually have to do laundry. The water coming into the machine is so cold that it doesn’t dissolve the laundry soap and ends up being stuck all over the clothes after it spins. So, I have started shaking up some soap in a bucket of hot water and dumping it in while the machine is filling with water. This works with some success. Otherwise, I just have to run the clothes again. Also, the electricity (which should come in at 220) is coming in around 120 most of the time during the winter. That means the washer doesn’t have the oomph it usually uses to wash the clothes. Things don’t get quite as clean or quite as wrung out during the spin cycle. Besides all this, we don’t have a dryer -- not that it would work well with such low voltage. So, after it’s washed, I bring it to the side room and hang it on strings hung from hooks in the ceiling. Or I hang it on drying racks that I can take in and out of the room when we’re not using it. After all this, it only takes 2-3 days for the clothes to dry completely so I can fold them and they don’t smell like old feet after a week.
Now, it’s time to start dinner. Our fridge is broken, so I don’t have a freezer to look for ingredients from, but no fear, our pantry is about as cold as a fridge, so we don’t have food going bad. Don’t worry, Mom and Dad, we don’t eat much meat or keep it over either.
After dinner, we spend more time in the side room if there’s time. We might play a game or build legos on the floor. When it’s time for the kids to go to bed, we walk upstairs, turn on the blower heater, and fill hot water bottles. Each kid takes one to bed with them. Then, we tuck them in really well under their blankets and head back to the side room to spend a few more hours. We usually make ourselves another cup of tea and relax in a bean bag that is heated from the floor. Ahhhh, what a great way to end the day.
If it’s a night to take a shower, and that’s usually only about every 3 days, I still have to brace myself for the shock. We do have a water heater in the bathroom, but the pressure is low, so you want to get in and out quick! After that, it’s just a matter of getting on all your layers before you get lock-jaw from shivering.
I snuggle under the blankets and find the hot water bottle that Chris has filled for my feet. That does it. I’m ready to hunker down and start again another day. Like I said, it’s really not that bad. We have a warm room. We have warm blankets.
And, if we’re still cold, we have something else. Here in this part of the world, we wear these over-sized, woolen tunics. They’re used more like a coat than a shirt. They are very wide through the body and that’s because . . . get ready for it . . . they carry fire underneath these tunics. Almost everyone here has a clay pot with live coals that they carry with them to warm their hands, and keep under their tunic to warm inside their clothes. Here, the idea isn’t to warm a whole area, but to warm yourself. Most families might have a wood stove or gas heater they use once in a while, but almost everyone uses a fire pot throughout the day. I've seen kids as young as 6 or 7 carrying one around. Chris loves this! He often talks about how it gives him quite a few stars on his man card to carry live fire around under his coat. I enjoy it, but haven’t gotten into it much yet since I often have 1-3 young kids jumping indiscriminately around me all hours of day and night. So, I sit in the side room and thank God for fuzzy hats.
Well, as I promised, there’s a glimpse of life in the winter here. No, the outside isn’t nearly as intense as the Midwest, but the inside . . . well . . . As I’ve heard others say, “It’s a lot like winter camping.” Yep, I’d say that covers it . . .
And here are the kids staying warm. Lu and Jed are wearing their woolen over-tunics. Abe's was hanging out to dry because he'd fallen in the mud, I think.
I promised I’d write a bit about what it’s like during winter here. I’ll be using Fahrenheit temps since most of my readers are Americans. Well, here goes. First of all, let’s be clear. Winter here is not the same as winter in Northern Illinois. When I grew up, I can remember carrying warm water from the basement in our house, through knee-high snow drifts, to the barn where we had electric lamps running, just to give a drink to the animals. It would be below 0 with wind chills around -20. I’d carry those buckets and any water that would slosh out would instantly freeze to my snow pant legs. I was just talking to my sister who was telling me that that morning the ‘feels like’ temp was -20. Yep, that’s not winter here. The very coldest it might ever get is about 14 and this winter (which has been a mild one) hasn’t really gotten below 25. The coldest high temps were still in the 40s and right now, it’s in the 50s during the day and dropping below freezing at night. So, you think, what’s the big deal? That sounds like Missouri or Virginia or something. Seems like it wouldn’t be that hard to deal with that, right?
Well, it’s really not that hard for me. This winter. So far. I’m learning to not underestimate things or make them little before I’ve gotten through them. Several times. But, really, I’m doing well and even enjoying this season here. People who have been here longer than I have ask concerned questions about how I’m holding up in the cold. Granted, again, it’s been a very mild winter thus far. Still, they ask. Why would they be concerned about a Northern IL girl dealing with a Virginia winter? Let me walk you through my day.
I wake up in the morning before dawn -- usually because someone jumped on my head because they wanted to ‘snuggle.’ I check my phone to see if it’s after 5 or if I should tuck them back into their beds. As my hand leaves the blankets, I’m reminded that it’s winter. Our bedroom is probably about 45 degrees in the morning. We don’t keep a heater on through the night because it would be a waste of money with all the warm blankets we have around. So, we just hunker down between our flannel sheets and deal.
Well, after the invasion of the little people, I start to think about waking up. Then, someone has to use the bathroom, so I’ve got to grit my teeth and throw the covers off and try not to let my teeth chatter so loud they wake the rest of the house. I do my best to hurry the kiddo through potty time so we can jump back under the covers as quick as possible. There’s usually some kind of scuffle as other children wake up and jostle for position. “I want to snuggle Mama! No, Me! I get the middle! You laid by Daddy yesterday!”
Finally, 7:00 rolls around and Chris starts to think about waking up and getting breakfast for the kids. He gets up, starts adding layers, and walks downstairs, after turning off the kids’ space heater in their room. (They're not as good at staying under their covers and we don't want to have to retuck them every 2 hours.) Soon after the exodus, I muster up the courage to get out of bed and add layers. Sometime during the warm season, Chris and I agreed that he’d take care of breakfast and I could have an hour or two of quiet time before heading down to teach school. But, I’m in the room where it’s 45 and still no sunshine coming in. So, I have to muster up courage to step into the chill. I search for my socks (which I left by the hot water bottle under the covers so at least they’d stay warm.) After that, everything else I put on is also 45 degrees. My pants over my sleep pants. Brrrrr! My tunic over my thermal shirt. Brrrr! My husband’s furry Russian-style cap that I confiscated for quiet time. Brrrrr! My moon-boot-like house shoes. Brrrrr! My woolen over-tunic. Brrrrr! My scarf. Brrrrr! It usually takes a good 20 minutes for all my layers to be warmed by my body heat. Not to mention, I sit on a bean bag to read and write and pray. Again, Brrrr! But, at least I’m awake . . .
After about an hour, I’m ready to make my way to the kitchen where Chris has the gas heater going full-steam. The kitchen might be about 60 degrees. It feels hot. I take off a layer. Chris has also spent time stoking a fire in the kitchen. It heats the floor of the room next-door. How cool!!!! This might be my favorite part of winter. The rest of the house is 40 degrees or less all day long, but walk into that room and sit on the floor . . . ahhhh! It’s enough to make you want to take off another layer. In that room (which might be 65 degrees) is where most of the action happens. We periodically heat the kitchen to make it livable and then the small fire Chris makes in the morning continues to heat the side room the rest of the day.
We eat our (usually) hot breakfast and I pour my first dose of warm water onto the tea bags in my thermal cup. Those tea bags usually make me 2-4 cups of tea a day, depending on my chilliness and thirst. After this, our tutor-helper comes and I move with the kids into the side room to start school. They received these ingenious floor desks that fold out and they can sit on the warm floor to do their school work or draw pictures as we teach about history or science. We always set up desks, do their work, and then take the desks back down, since we’ll be in that room for most of the day. I make my way back to the kitchen, start the heater again if it’s too cold, and make lunch.
I set Abe and Lu up for their naps and make sure they’re covered in at least 2 thick blankets since we don’t use the space heater during the day and it’s already cooled to 50 degrees at the most and shady in their room. Jed and I head outside where the sun can warm us up a bit. As I said, it’s warmer than in the house. When Abe and Lu wake up, they usually head outside, too, and unless it's rainy, they spend the rest of the afternoon out there.
About this time, I usually have to do laundry. The water coming into the machine is so cold that it doesn’t dissolve the laundry soap and ends up being stuck all over the clothes after it spins. So, I have started shaking up some soap in a bucket of hot water and dumping it in while the machine is filling with water. This works with some success. Otherwise, I just have to run the clothes again. Also, the electricity (which should come in at 220) is coming in around 120 most of the time during the winter. That means the washer doesn’t have the oomph it usually uses to wash the clothes. Things don’t get quite as clean or quite as wrung out during the spin cycle. Besides all this, we don’t have a dryer -- not that it would work well with such low voltage. So, after it’s washed, I bring it to the side room and hang it on strings hung from hooks in the ceiling. Or I hang it on drying racks that I can take in and out of the room when we’re not using it. After all this, it only takes 2-3 days for the clothes to dry completely so I can fold them and they don’t smell like old feet after a week.
Now, it’s time to start dinner. Our fridge is broken, so I don’t have a freezer to look for ingredients from, but no fear, our pantry is about as cold as a fridge, so we don’t have food going bad. Don’t worry, Mom and Dad, we don’t eat much meat or keep it over either.
After dinner, we spend more time in the side room if there’s time. We might play a game or build legos on the floor. When it’s time for the kids to go to bed, we walk upstairs, turn on the blower heater, and fill hot water bottles. Each kid takes one to bed with them. Then, we tuck them in really well under their blankets and head back to the side room to spend a few more hours. We usually make ourselves another cup of tea and relax in a bean bag that is heated from the floor. Ahhhh, what a great way to end the day.
If it’s a night to take a shower, and that’s usually only about every 3 days, I still have to brace myself for the shock. We do have a water heater in the bathroom, but the pressure is low, so you want to get in and out quick! After that, it’s just a matter of getting on all your layers before you get lock-jaw from shivering.
I snuggle under the blankets and find the hot water bottle that Chris has filled for my feet. That does it. I’m ready to hunker down and start again another day. Like I said, it’s really not that bad. We have a warm room. We have warm blankets.
And, if we’re still cold, we have something else. Here in this part of the world, we wear these over-sized, woolen tunics. They’re used more like a coat than a shirt. They are very wide through the body and that’s because . . . get ready for it . . . they carry fire underneath these tunics. Almost everyone here has a clay pot with live coals that they carry with them to warm their hands, and keep under their tunic to warm inside their clothes. Here, the idea isn’t to warm a whole area, but to warm yourself. Most families might have a wood stove or gas heater they use once in a while, but almost everyone uses a fire pot throughout the day. I've seen kids as young as 6 or 7 carrying one around. Chris loves this! He often talks about how it gives him quite a few stars on his man card to carry live fire around under his coat. I enjoy it, but haven’t gotten into it much yet since I often have 1-3 young kids jumping indiscriminately around me all hours of day and night. So, I sit in the side room and thank God for fuzzy hats.
Well, as I promised, there’s a glimpse of life in the winter here. No, the outside isn’t nearly as intense as the Midwest, but the inside . . . well . . . As I’ve heard others say, “It’s a lot like winter camping.” Yep, I’d say that covers it . . .
And here are the kids staying warm. Lu and Jed are wearing their woolen over-tunics. Abe's was hanging out to dry because he'd fallen in the mud, I think.
Bless your heart!!!
ReplyDeleteHe does!!!!!! :)
ReplyDeleteLove reading up on you Em! Miss you bunches! I kinda want one of those clay pots under my tunic!
ReplyDeleteHa! I'll try to bring you one next time we come in. I could totally see you using one :)
ReplyDelete