Mean Kid Winter

Winter is roaming the streets outside, like a mean kid looking for a dog to kick, pissed he's not still in Alaska and wants back, now dammit!  Cranky kid with short sleep and a bad sense of humor.  I think I heard April whining in the dark last night before Winter returned.  

I'm cold.  Trying to speak with a cold lethargic mouth produces linguistic novelty, so I play around with it.  I answer the phone:  "Huhwoh.  Yef, I amb.  Thoh, than wu."  The jaw is moving, but lips are not.  Is this what Botox feels like?

I'm looking at my hands, clay imposters of what used to be agile and nimble.  I wonder:  If all the blood in my hands and feet has left and gone, where did it go?  Probably Mexico, maybe Hawaii.

Some of my furniture is made of wood.  Surely something will burn well.  A bonfire in my livingroom seems totally reasonable.  Hey, a nouveau form of spring cleaning!  If summer warmth ever does come around again, I'll have plenty of new space to decorate.  Logic, pure and simple.

Meat locker is not the way you like to describe your own home, but this place was built in the architecturally dismal era of the early 60s when stucco, single-pane aluminum windows and no insulation at all were good ideas, I guess.  One inefficient wall heater, designed and built in some god-forsaken gulag on the Russian steppes out of left-over scrap metal, is all I have to ward off the chill.  I wonder if I should keep a window open, though, in case the thing is giving off toxic fumes.

The air temp is 52 degrees today, but the wind-chill factor, with a furious gusting and snorting wind coming straight down from the tundra, is -47.  I swear.  Well, in my mind I swear, because my lips are frozen into one numb incoherent blob now, and I can't speak anymore.

I have one saving grace:  My laptop sitting on my knees is keeping me warm - another reason to keep writing.