Yes, my home, the namesake of my blog. Ye Olde Ice Box.
I'm presently sitting at my desk in the fishbowl, swaddled in a fleece bathrobe capped with a fuzzy pink winter hat. Not to mention my ski socks and shearling clogs. I am debating taking off my metal watch because it is just that cold.
According to my dashboard weather readout, it's a savage -20˚ Fahrenheit right now. Inside, with the electric heaters creaking and straining it's only 60 degrees. Possibly lower, but I haven't looked recently. Why, you might ask, would a school allow children to live in such inhospitable conditions? I don't know. I could speak volumes about the state of repair of my house, but today I'm going to focus on its heat inefficiency.
A couple of points.
We live in the Adirondacks. As far as I know, when this house was constructed in the first half of the 20th century, it was equally cold if not colder than it is now. Someone at the school decided, "What we really need is a modern, spacious house on campus with walls made out of large single paned glass windows, none of which can open. Also, we'll forget about insulation because we're tough Adirondack people. We can handle the cold!" Eff that! I have six large, single pane glass windows in my bedroom. My heat is turned up to 80 right now. I'm estimating that probably 40% of that heat is going straight out the window.
I must correct myself. Yes. The building probably has insulation. Insulation from 1945 or so.
Continuing on. Yesterday, my hands were so cold in my bedroom that I could not even type or write smoothly. I wrote a note for a student to take to the computer room that looked like it had been written by a recovering stroke victim.
Secondly, there's a small problem with the temperatures being, you know... cold when the school is rebounding from a lice infestation. All of the children's bedding was hauled away to quarantine. They have been sleeping with those skimpy blue thermal blankets and sheets for a week and a half now. I wake them up in the morning and they're quaking in fetal position in their sleep. It's driving me nuts. It's driving them nuts too. I hope the nurse pities everyone soon and declares a swift end to the delousing measures.
Furthermore, the school has taken steps to increase the heat efficiency of the house. They made large puffy thermal curtains that hang over the colossal panes downstairs. The problem? The electric heaters are located directly below them and most of the heat just soars right up behind the curtains. If you could hear me, you'd hear me laughing ruefully. My living room is unbearable right now.
While the thick layer of frost on the inside of the kitchen door is really lovely, it is wrong and bad. I want a smoothie right now, but I'm pretty sure that eating/drinking something cold is just not a good idea.
Perhaps I should relocate.
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