Cat in a Hoodie

This is something you don't see every day: a fluffy orange cat docilely posing in a red Old Navy hoodie with kangaroo pocket and cut-off sleeves.

It had sleeves, but they came down over his elbows and restricted his walking. Then we tried rolling them up, but they were too bunchy under his arms. So I had to get all teenage-redneck-circa-1985 on it and cut off the sleeves.



In spite of what his facial expression might tell you, Alistair doesn't seem to mind wearing the hoodie. I swear, it's for his own benefit. It's cold in the house, and he loves to snuggle on and under blankets in front of the space heater. So why not give him a portable warm fuzzy, right?

Okay, and I admit, part of the reason I dress him in clothes is because he reminds me of that fat orange cat in the tiny T-shirt that Fievel befriends in An American Tail.

It's not easy finding clothes for cats, you know. Sure, dog clothes are everywhere, and technically even this hoodie is made for a dog, but it's hard to get a decent fit. The small is too small, the medium is too large, or Alistair can walk right out of the gaping neck opening.

Maybe the dearth of cat clothes is because most cats are like Henry. We don't even try with him. He would be scarred for life.

But Alistair is pretty easygoing. He didn't resist his fluffy jingle bell Christmas collar, his hoodie, or even the time I put him in a pink cable knit sweater with a pearl necklace attached. Though he did pitch a royal fit when we put him in a Santa hat. Guess he's not a fan of Old St. Nick.

Here he is looking all gangsta with the hood up:



I don't leave it up for long because I can't tell if he likes it or hates it. He seems neutral toward the hoodie itself, but I don't want to push my luck.

Maple Red

We have two maple trees beside our house, and every morning when I get out of the shower, our cat Alistair is standing in the window soaking up the view. So I go over, pet him, and soak up the view a little while, too. Lately, the view is a little different every morning, a few more red and orange leaves on the ground, a few less on the fig tree, the light changing, too.

Don't you just love fall?

Love/Hate

My relationship with our triple-track aluminum storm windows is kinda rocky. It reminds me of my relationship with a boy in high school who one day I'd think was the bees knees (you know, when I was a teenager in the 1940s) and then the next day, or hour, I'd think he was the biggest jerk on the planet.

Yeah, that's pretty much how I feel about the storms.



I hate them because they are ugly. Many of the screens are dry-rotted (can metal rot?) or something to the point that they're in shreds, some with big holes gauged or cut in them. Then there are the shiny aluminum frames and the pinchy things you have to push in to open them and the big sheets of dusty glass hiding my pretty old windows.

And yet I love them because they let me open the windows without letting bugs in and the cats out. Ok, that only applies to the ones without shredded screens. Also, they allegedly reduce the amount of cold air gushing into my house in the winter, and they protect the old wood windows from the elements.

So what to do, what to do? Around here, cold is a factor from late November through February. Nuclear-level heat takes over from June to September, so we have to keep the A/C on and the windows shut.

That leaves four months of the year (March, April, May, October) when window-opening is a priority. So far this year we haven't opened them much because the outdoors have been hotter than the indoors. And one night when we left the window open in our bedroom, a mosquito got in and woke us up whining in our ears and biting our shoulders.

If we're willing to forego the cold-prevention thing, we could take off the storms and get screens only for the lower halves of the windows we most commonly open.

The front half of the house (the part without aluminum siding) already has no storm windows, and I haven't noticed any significant difference in temperature.

The usual This Old House-ish suggestion is wooden storms that can be changed with the seasons - glass for winter, screen for summer. That would N-O-T work for us. We are way too busy (and yet also lazy) to make that switch twice a year. If the Christmas tree is any indication, we'd finally get the glass up halfway through the winter and the screens up halfway through the summer. And then what's the point?

Part of me would love to just impulsively take them all down and figure out a solution later. The other part (the one that has a voice remarkably like D's) says "Don't you already have enough to do without worrying about this right now?"

How to Triumph Over the Gas Company

After the painful blow of the tax bill, I needed some good financial news. Yesterday the gas bill came. I tore into the envelope with the kind of excitement usually reserved for birthday cards potentially containing cash. The bill could have been more bad news - that in spite of all our shivering under piles of blankets and layers of clothing, we still had to pay some crazy-high number.

But hurray! The bill was only $118! That's a savings of $230 over this month last year. It's proof that our frigid living is paying off!

In honor of our success, I'll share my favorite tips for staying warm in a cold, old house and I hope you'll share yours, too.

Wear warm, fuzzy slippers at ALL times ... with socks if you can stand it.

Buy electric space heaters with thermostats (though we haven't found timers necessary). Our cheapie heaters work better than the expensive one!

Leave the oven door open after you turn it off and stand in front of it, toasting yourself in the leftover heat.

Get some cats, preferably one for each human. Encourage the cats to nap on your lap while you watch TV.

Get a space heater for the bathroom and turn it on a few minutes before your shower. Shut the doors, and the room (and those wretched cold tiles) will heat up in no time.

Invest in good flannel sheets. They're not as cold as regular sheets when you first get in the bed, and they warm up faster.

And my favorite:

Work vigorously on the house, so you're too busy (and sweaty and dirty) to get cold!

Mmm, Spending Money Tastes Good

In these cold days, I take comfort in anything that can make me feel a little warmer. Even when it's just playing tricks on my mind.

Yesterday my sister and I did some last-minute Christmas shopping. I haven't been to a Bath and Body Works in about a hundred years, because it is The Bad Place. The place that makes me want to spend lots of money on products that I'll crowd onto the linen closet shelves with all the other products I don't use.

As usual, I bought lots of things. I can't help it. I like things that smell like food but have no calories.

The best thing I got was the Wallflowers "continuous home fragrance" plug-in. Now, even when the house is cold as a witch's you-know-what, the smell of Sweet Cinnamon Pumpkin in the air lets me pretend it's toasty warm inside ... and that something delicious is cooking instead of nothing.

I also got some Warm Vanilla Sugar perfume and some Pink Buttercream Frosting hand lotion. And my wristwatch smells like peppermint because it's been riding next to the gum in my purse. Yep, I'm just drowning in the holiday spirit. And I feel strangely hungry. Wonder why that is?

Edited to add:
When I talked to D on the phone this afternoon, he said the house was "cold as a well digger's ass." Guess the pumpkin-scented air didn't make him feel as warm as it did for me.

Slump

Progress on the house has slowed to a crawl. No, crawl sounds too speedy. Creep. Drag. Complete standstill.

First, we got sick. Then came the holidays and all their accompanying gatherings (two down, three to go).

But the real reason we've virtually stopped working on the house is the cold. We're trying to avoid the $300-plus gas bills of yesteryear, so the thermostat is set on 59. Every now and then, the central heat kicks on, but for the most part the house is heated with portable electric heaters. The house is one giant refrigerator punctuated with three tiny pockets of heat.

In the evenings, we retreat to the living room, even eating our dinner there. We almost close the pocket doors between living and dining rooms (leaving just space enough for the cats to squeeze through), set the electric heater on oscillate, and cozy up together under that warm blanket I made a while back. After a few minutes, the cats snuggle up with us - Alistair between us under the blanket, Henry stretched out on my legs.

Who wants to leave the comfort of family and the heater to go wrangle with sheetrock in a cold, dusty bathroom? Not me. And Darwin is even less interested.

Even in the weekend daytime, the night's cold hangs in the house. Darwin flees outside and invents work to do on his motorcycle or the yard. I layer a T-shirt, flannel pajama top and hooded jacket and get sucked into the computer until my fingers and nose turn into little ice cubelets.

Ugh. I'm getting disgusted with myself just reading this. Sure, we deserve a break now and then. But it's so easy to get into a habit of nonactivity.

This Saturday was the first day in a long while that we hardly watched any TV. It was a fun and busy day, but even then we didn't do any work on the house.

We slept late, then went and had pancakes and bacon at our friend R's new restaurant and stayed to watch the Christmas parade out the front window. Then we went to the post office, where the postal worker was as mystified by my package bound for Australia as I dreaded she would be. After that, we peeked in the windows of a cute Victorian house/former hotel R owns, while my heels sunk in the ground. Back at home, D tried to cut some limbs away from the power lines, but the limb cutter pole thingy wasn't long enough. We did some laundry and folded some clothes.

Then we went back to R's restaurant for a late lunch and chit-chatted some more. Back at home, we changed our sheets to the new brown flannel ones I bought a while back (SO WARM!). Then I wrapped presents for our nieces and nephews, while Darwin played invisible marker games. That night, we watched Monster-in-Law (not a classic, I assure you).

Okay, I'm boring even myself.

So what now? Do we just accept the status quo until the end of February? Somebody give me a jumpstart. Is it wrong to think about throwing money at people and telling them to fix my bathroom?

Heat Treat

Today I found some fabric that's sort of suede-y on one side and a very soft, low-pile faux fur on the other side. I got some and bound the edges to make a throw blanket. Boy is that thing warm! It's like the miracle blanket. I actually got almost HOT in it, which is unheard of around here lately.

Tomorrow morning we're going to Georgia to spend Thanksgiving with my sister. I'm looking forward to spending one night in a house where the heat is freely run.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Velvet Elvis

Okay, this post actually has nothing to do with Elvis. Just want to show off my new velvet living room curtains.



They're not particularly impressive, but I think they're keeping it warmer in there. It's hard to tell though, because this week hasn't been as cold as last week.

I may hem/pin them up. Their length (84 inches) is bugging me. I want them to either reach to the floor or sit on the sill. This looks a little funky.

Then again, if hemming requires taking them down - nevermind. I had to bust out the big daddy ladder to hang them. And a recently-dead roach almost fell on me when I took down the other curtains. Eeeek, I don't want to think about that. La la la dee da, pink ponies, starshine, moonbeams, children frolicking. La laalaaaaa ...

Sinks! Yes, let's talk about sinks some more! Thank you for all your excellent advice. The hubs and I will carefully consider and measure this weekend, and I hope to report a decision on Monday.

Cardboard Window Treatments

Last night as I sat on the couch with my smoochies (thats code for "cats" at our house), I had a moment of inspiration.

The living room has three windows, one directly behind the sofa. I noticed as I curled up under two blankets and two cats, my shoulders still kept getting chilly. You know, as if they were being hit with an artic blast from behind.

Suddenly, I realized the WINDOW was to blame. Duh. Then I remembered the first winter of our marriage when we lived in a little shack with gas space heaters. The heaters were both in the living room (handy, huh?), and Alistair would misbehave at night, so we had to shut the bedroom door. Then we would just about freeze to death. Every time the wind blew, you could feel it coming through the windows.

Finally one night we got fed up, and because we were broke and it was the middle of the night, we used DUCT TAPE to attach flattened cardboard boxes over the windows. Then we tacked up blankets over that. Very chic.

Remembering this charming arrangement gave me the idea to get a set of heavy drapes for the winter. Why didn't I think of this before?

Today, I ordered velvet drapes in "Cappuccino" from Target. Hey, free shipping, and they're MUCH cheaper than the Pottery Barn versions, even the Pottery Barn via eBay versions. They're shorter than I wanted, but they'll do.

The living room is the place we spend the most time in the evenings, and I think covering up these three enormous windows will warm the room up considerably. Especially while we figure out what to do about insulating. Hey, if it blocks enough cold, we might be able to put off insulating until next year.

Insulation Questions

I thought about it some more, and I don't think we'll hire a pro to do the insulation, whether we want to or not. Seems like every bill on the planet came due this month ... insurance, car tags, etc. $200 here, $200 there.

I suggested to D that we don't have to do the whole house at once. We could insulate under the living room (where we spend the most time) and maybe the office (since it's the coldest room in the house).

But I want to do a little more research after reading the comments. As Patricia W. says, there are so many conflicting ideas about what's best.

Patrick says Insulstar spray-in foam is awesome, and I agree it sounds interesting. I like the idea of sealing up all the cracks and eliminating drafts.

But I worry about spraying something permanent under my floors. I think we have no subfloor - just tongue-and-groove pine. I checked under a vent cover, and though I couldn't see well, I felt all that cold, under-house air breathing on my hand.

I'm terrified of doing anything to the house that can't be changed back at some point in the future, if necessary.

So does this foam attach to the wood? Can it affect the wood? What if we needed to replace part of the floor in future? And is this something we could do ourselves?

3,000 Square Feet of Insulation

D went under the house today to evaluate the insulation situation. The last time we looked, it was (I think) around this time last year, and we noted the house was partially insulated under the floor with fiberglass batting. Since then, we've been planning to finish out the insulation.

Another winter is fast approaching, with the promise of even higher gas prices than last year. We're trying to resist turning on the heat, so the last two nights it has been pretty chilly in the house. When the cats curl up with us on the couch instead of blinking at us scornfully from across the room, we know it's cold.

It is time to insulate under the rest of the house. But Darwin found that it's a much bigger job than we anticipated. For some reason, we thought most of the house was insulated. Oops. Only ONE ROOM is insulated - our bedroom, which is notably cooler or warmer than the rest of the house at appropriate times. Makes sense.

So now D is thinking this might be too big a job for him. He suggested we *gasp* PAY SOMEONE ELSE to do it. That would be a first for us.

To argue his point, he presented me with the long-awaited actual square footage of our house. It's somewhere around 3,300 square feet ... nowhere near either the previous owner's claim - 3,900 - or the appraiser's - 2,800. I want to check the appraisal again because if he underestimated by that much, we could possibly refinance. Only trouble is I can't FIND the appraisal. I put in a call to our loan person today and left a message. Maybe she still has a copy.