Color Me Grouchy!

I hate the cold.  I know this is allegedly the season of good will, but I have no good will to give because I’m frozen.

I want to move, but I can’t.  Thank you, husband in assisted living.  You dragged me to this god-forsaken area of the country over thirty years ago and now I’m stuck!

I suppose I should look on the bright side.  Once you buy a jacket good for 40 degrees below, you’re set for a lifetime.  And, believe me, I have one.  Yes, it looks a bit ragged, but do I really need a Canada Goose jacket and have people stare at me, as if I had nothing else to do with my money?

My house is cold.  The furnace barely heats the main room.  The thermostat is set at 70 during the day, but the real temperature is 68.  Because I have cathedral ceilings, it might be 70 near the top, but near the floor, where my five feet tall exists, it is cold.

My bedroom is over the garage.  The garage isn’t heated.  Take a guess at how warm my bedroom is.  I’ve closed the heat vents in the other bedrooms, and they’re still warmer than mine!

This house has an addition where I work.  Fortunately, it has a separate heater.  When I came downstairs this morning, the back room was 62 degrees.  Right now it’s managed to hit 68.  I turn it off when it reaches 70, at which point there is a quick slide to 66.

It didn’t have to be this way.  Before my husband’s catastrophic fall, we had planned to spend a month in southern Arizona, where we could enjoy more birding activities.  Or, even before that, when we were comfortably situated in my beloved Atlanta, he could have decided not to take this damn job that brought us to the frozen northland.  Oh, ambition, it has done us in.

So here I am, aging in a place I don’t want to be.

Another reason to be grouchy?  Why, all of a sudden, is everyone calling me “dear?”  Yes, okay, I’m 82, but I look 75.  Also, I used to be taller, but I’m not a shrunken, bent-over old lady.  And I walk with a purpose, as in, get the **** out of my way.  My daughter tells me I have “resting bitch face.” Does this qualify as a “dear” type woman?

Old and cold.  So this holiday, I say, “Bah Humbug!”