See What’s Become Of Me?

Eff the cold. I’ll take dark over cold any day. Right now my house is 65 degrees. I’m fairly certain that’s against the law; it’s probably in the Geneva Conventions. One would think that my parents would be more attentive to the needs of their favorite child, but this is a typical conversation with them around this time of year:

“::teeth chattering::”

“You’re so dramatic.”

“It’s coooooooold. And there are wolves after me…”

“Put on a sweater.”

“Turn up the heat!”

“Who’s paying the gas bill?”

“Who’s paying to have my nose amputated from frostbite?!”

“Why on Earth did you give yourself such a ghastly purple pedicure?”

“Those are my toes! Because it’s cold!”

“Put on some socks, idiot child.”

We compromise with an electric blanket that I wrap around myself, shroud-style, for the duration of winter. It means that I can’t get any farther than ten feet from a wall outlet, but that suits me fine. The bathroom is fifteen feet from the socket near my bed, so that leaves five feet to scurry across into the shower, where I promptly scald off the top layer of skin and create enough steam to set off the hallway’s fire alarm, before doing a mad dash back to my room to hibernate under the blanket till the next day. It’s a system.