The Weather Inside is Frightful

Month four of interdenominational, cross-cultural, pan-socioeconomic wedded bliss. The husband is coming to terms with the concept of being a starving newlywed. ("Coming to terms" means "he realized how mad I was that he kept going to his mother's house for free food and internet.") The temperature hovers in the twenties and the heater is out in the living room. We come home and leave our coats on, cuddle up together* on the sofa under multiple blankets, watch Dexter and eat miniature marshmallows toasted over the gas stove. The cat wedges himself into the folds of shivering limbs. I try to start a sing-a-long.



"I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart."
". . ."
"Come on! 'Down in my heart--"
"What?"
"You're supposed to say 'Where?'"
"Oh. Okay."
"I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart."
"Where?"
"Down in my heart."
"Where?"
"Down in my heart, I--"
"Where?"
"-'ve got the--"
"Where?"
"That's too many wheres!"
"Oh, sorry."
"Didn't you grow up singing that song?"
"Catholics don't sing that one."
"You went to a Presbyterian preschool. Didn't they teach you that one?"
"They sang about red and yellow people. I liked the snacks. And the principal. And Star Trek."
"They didn't teach Star Trek to you! You saw it at home."
"Yes, and I was the only four-year-old who could say 'torpedo.'"




The show freezes, because I'm sitting on the remote. We freeze, because it's very, very cold in our apartment. The cat is happy, because he is snuggled in the middle of us and also because he's covered in fur. We're leaving town for Christmas in three days and I'm not packed and haven't done gift shopping. I think I want to skip Christmas this year and spend the next few months huddled under a blanket with my husband, watching ethically challenging TV shows and eating burnt marshmallows. We'll come out when it's April.




* "Okay, if you bend your legs that way and I rotate my torso this way and crab-crawl four inches to the left, we can maximize body heat regained through physical contact and minimize the risk of drafts coming through the edges of the blanket. Hey, am I sitting on the remote or are you just happy to see me?"