Survival of the Most Creative

The combination of my recent weatherization classes and the trip to Vermont mid-winter has got me thinking about all the creative ways I've learned to keep warm in cold spaces.

Growing up, we always welcomed fall with a firm, "Stay the hawk out of my house" by covering the windows with plastic and stapling it to the frame. This kept the warm air inside and the cold air outside. Because the plastic was nearly opaque, it also kept the sunlight out, so winters were spent in a large, dark, cold Victorian beast of a house that I hated in those months. Looking back, it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever spent time in.

There was also not that much warm air to keep in. Oil prices, even at their lowest, add up over long winters, and I swear any heat that actually came out of the oddly placed radiators (some behind doors, underneath windows) found all of the empty rooms to breathe into instead of the few rooms that were actually occupied. This house was truly enormous, and my last few years there were spent only with my mom; being the baby of the family, the rest had flown the coop by then.

While I chastised my mom for tucking her leggings and thermals into her multiple pairs of socks, I froze in my stubborn and inadequate summer outfits. To compensate I unscrewed the valve of the radiator in my room to let the steam in. I would close the door and enjoy a sauna that was no doubt causing immense moisture damage. These days I tuck my thermals into multiple layers of socks.

I can remember begging my mom to bake blueberry cakes and pumpkin pies and boil beef stews not out of hunger, but because I wanted to stand by the stove or sit in the big kitchen chair with a blanket around me and feel the warmth. The kitchen is always an excellent place to be to get warm. Just the smell of cinnamon can warm up a person.

We stuffed socks with rice and warmed them in the microwave and collected them under blankets like a squirrel's den full of nuts. We shoved old towels against the bottoms of doors and window sills to keep the wind from creeping in. I used the blow dryer to dry my curls, which was actually just a disguise to feel the hot air on my goosebumps. You have to be really cold to blow dry curls because the result is a feral mane.

When I went to college I lived in an assortment of apartments, ranging from the quaint and aesthetically pleasing, to the claustrophobic and hygienically questionable. I wore hats and gloves to bed, falling asleep only after drinking a pot of hot chocolate and rum. I covered myself in blankets and wrapped up in them in the morning, dragging them into the bathroom and letting go only when the shower water was hot enough.

I've migrated south since then mostly to escape the rabid Vermont frosts. But this particular Virginia winter has brought back some of those old tricks. I sometimes sleep with a hat on, although I sleep next to a human furnace so it's very rare that I have to. I make hot tea just so I can hold the mug until I've soaked up every bit of warmth and am left holding a stale, cold mug of tea water.

What creative things have you done to primitively weatherize your home or body during the dark days?

Grade A

I imagine that most people turn into a maniacal beasts around the new year trying to create the perfect night of party dresses, glitter, cleavage and champagne flutes while simultaneously vowing to stick to a strict yoga routine and hand-crank their own wheat-grass shots every morning before work for the following 365 days. I have painted this picture from what I know.

I decided to start 2012, my first full year in Virginia, a little differently. Even though creating resolutions is one of the most exciting traditions of the new year, the inevitability of breaking them is a depressing reminder of how poorly sculpted my willpower is. So I spent the week prior to the new year in Vermont with family and didn't write down or even think about a single resolution. I resolve nothing.

In fact, my snowy retreat was so mind-engulfing that I didn't even wonder if Occupy took a holiday break or if atheists were hired to assemble and decorate the Times Square Christmas Tree. Instead, I slept in a big house with old wallpaper and listen to my grandparents argue over patched socks. I laid in bed with a fever and listened to trees scratch the windows when the wind blew, and I could even feel the wind through the glass. I woke up to homemade pancakes cooked on a cast iron pan with four little permanent pancake shadows and I ate them with Vermont Grade A maple sugar. If you've never had delicate homemade pancakes with Vermont Grade A then you are missing a true delight.

I drove a full day to get back home just two hours before the new year struck. Exhausted and relieved to be home, I spent New Years under a pile of warm blankets next to a banjo player. I'd say that's a grade a start to a new year.