FUCK, IT'S COLD OUT

Winter in Cleveland heralds the start of The Four-Hundred Dollar Gas Bill Season. Part of the character of living in a 1920's brownstone apartment is that I get to experience the outside weather inside my living room via the enormous drafty windows placed liberally throughout. While this may not be a pressing concern to me in the summer, it becomes the focal point of my life during the winter. It would be your focus too if you realized after a few days that you had to keep moving while you were in your apartment lest you start exhibiting the initial stages of hypothermia. Determined not to pay exorbitant heating bills nor freeze to death, I went to the hardware store and invested in plastic sheeting that can be (quickly and easily, the box says) cut and taped to the window frame, thereby sealing the window from drafts. One hour, a cut finger, two rolls of painter's tape, and much salty language later, I had my bedroom windows done. I went to bed with a deep sense of self satisfaction, secure in the knowledge that my bedroom, at least, would stay toasty.

I woke up the next morning somewhere in Antarctica. During the night the draft from my windows had popped some of the tape off, allowing the cold free access to my room. Let me reiterate: with my windows shut and sealed, the draft was still so strong it ripped off two layers of painter's tape from the windowframe. The next five minutes degenerated into a thermo-hedonistic bacchanalia of locating and putting on as much clothing as I could muster myself into without losing too many motor functions. I'd like to find whoever invented flannel and worship them as the deity they are clearly meant to be. I solved the problem temporarily by spending the next night over at my boyfriend's, whose apartment isn't near as drafty and who also enjoys the benefit of not having to pay for heating. I'll best you someday, winter, someday!