I have met some uncharitable types from time to time, and some of
them have told me that the only reason that I am not pretty stupid
is my face. There just may be a tiny kernel of truth in there,
somewhere. I say this because as I sit here, I am dressed in
woolens from neck to toe-tips. There would be nothing strange
in that, except for the fact that the August sun outside is shining
brilliantly, and the temperature here in South Florida is hovering
in the low 90’s. So why the wool, you ask? Pshaw, Gentle
Reader. The temperature inside my humble abode is an arctic
71 degrees. That is only 39 degrees above the freezing point
of water. Of course, the relative humility is somewhere around
20 percent, so that makes it colder yet. With the overhead fans
on (and they are) the wind-chill factor brings the ambient temperature
of our living quarters to a reasonable imitation of a cool day on
Mars.
It seems the Fabled PC likes it “to be comfortable” in
the summer. I’ve just now gotten finished whining, I mean, discussing the
problem with my dainty bride, and I am still at a loss.
And I
know better than to sneak the thermostat up above freezing.
I
tried the direct approach first: snuggling up to my sweetie,
I placed my cold nose on her neck, and nuzzled her romantically.
“Yech!” she leapt away like a startled deer, “Hey, you -- if that’s your name,
keep your frozen proboscis offa my alabaster skin, willya?” PC sometimes has a way with words.
“Sorry, love. It’s just
that it’s so cold in here.”
“It’s not cold.”
I reached for
my hot chocolate, but my numb fingers didn’t work right, and the cup
spilled on the kitchen floor. PC was sympathetic.
“First
day with your new hands?”
Seeing that I had casually moved over
to stand with my bare feet in the spilled hot chocolate, she gave
me a Number Six Look.
“It’s not cold. I’ve been working. In fact, it’s hot in here.”
I tried the best stratagem I knew. I’d already gotten the cold nose ploy in play, and now it was time
for the frozen foot tactic. I dried off the chocolate, and offered
a foot.
“Feel how cold my feet are.”
But the Fabled PC
was more than up to it. She had the most devastating answer
conceivable:
“Don’t tell me about your frozen feet. It’s
summertime. Anybody who walks around the house barefoot in the
summertime deserves to get frozen feet!”
Again, Gentle Reader,
I must point out that those of us that are married to members of that
curious sub-race (redheads) are guided by some contrary rules.
The
obvious difficulty of coming up with a reasonable reply to that last
statement can be readily appreciated.
There was an interesting
aspect of the truth to my beautiful bride’s argument. She claimed
that she was hot because she was working. The work she was doing,
by the way, was not something you would expect from a fluffy bundle
of red-haired pulchritude. She had been working with a noisy
compressor-water spraying device thingy which she had rented.
She’d been splashing and blowing and chugging the patio screen,
chattahoochee deck, and outside furniture with this rented monster
for a couple of hours now, while I had been improving my mind watching
some Saturday afternoon television.
And my feet were cold.
“You’re
watching one of those silly fishing programs, aren’t you.” PC
gestured at the two guys in a jonboat on the screen. “I bet
that guy is going to throw that big fish right back in the water,
right?”
She must have seen this program before, I thought to
myself. But I watched her sigh, and turn her shapely self around
to go back outside into the nice warm 90-degree sunshine.
I am
fortunate in that I seem to have an enormous capacity for absorbing
guilt. This is handy if you happen to be married to a saint. Lesser men might have been tempted to go outside and at least labor
along side of their spouses, if not even take over the job outright.
I’m proud to say I can rise above such things.
The
only problem that I see is that the Fabled PC cranked the air conditioning
down a few more degrees before she went outside, and I think that
now I may have some trouble typing with mittens on.
