Deep Freeze, Part II

It's still really, really cold.

I've sort of gotten used to the cold at this point, honestly. No, I don't like it, per se, but I have gotten used to it a bit. I've set the furnace to 52 -- it's about 60 in the house, and I can manage that with the layers I'm wearing and shall continue to wear. When I take a hot shower in a little while, I will make it hot enough to where it basically scalds my skin, which will keep me comfortably warm for a few hours. Currently, it is 7 degrees outside, and feels like -9. This is ten degrees warmer than it was when I awoke this morning, so at least that's something, right?

Neither Daisy nor my parents have it as, ahem, lucky as I do right now; in Omaha, it is -4, and back home in West Virginia, it is -6; this should give you some idea of how far-reaching this arctic blast of cold stretches across the country, for it's over 1,000 miles from here to West Virginia. I'm not sure exactly how cold it got last night before I went to bed; I went to sleep relatively early and slept until long after the sun was up this morning, and even then when I awoke the house felt freezing until I cranked the furnace for a bit.

True to my word, I have not ventured out into the icy tundra, not even to get the mail today. It's supposed to reach 41 tomorrow -- I'll go get the mail then, and will mail my water bill at the same time. Until it's warm enough to move around without my joints freezing up like the old man I am, my ass is staying inside out of the nastiness. I've got enough groceries and supplies to last me until probably Friday or so before I'd have to go shopping again...not that my finances can really support much more shopping until I get paid again and I can start to get back on my feet somewhat. Again, it's not like the cold is really helping that, since the longer it remains cold, the longer the furnace has to run, and the higher my electric bill goes for next month, when my financial future is still uncertain. As it stands, right now for necessities and foodstuffs I have to live on my credit cards, because I cannot spare a cent from my bank account for anything but bills.

I didn't hear anything today about my classes for the spring, though I didn't necessarily expect to; while today was the first day the university has been open since around Christmas, it's so cold that who knows if anyone actually got in to campus to mess with the scheduling stuff. I would imagine, as I mentioned before, that I'll hear something within the next few days, as everyone will need their schedules (especially the adjuncts) with enough breathing space to get everything plotted, ready, and have lesson plans put in place before the semester starts on the 21st, which is two weeks from tomorrow.

Still, until I know what I'll be teaching -- aside from the one class I know I have -- I'm going to be a bit stressed out, understandably. On the off-chance that I get nothing else, which is unlikely but still extremely possible, I will immediately need to get some sort of a second job doing something, somewhere, in order to simply be able to pay my bills. I will have reached the end of my rope on that, and what it is won't matter -- I will have no choice. It's either that or homelessness, which would be a bad thing in the final months counting down to my wedding.

Truth be told, these next few weeks will shape, basically, the rest of the year of 2014. If the right cards fall into place at the right times, everything should be fine. If they don't, or someone/thing throws an unforeseen wrench into the gears, my life will be a life of great upheaval and probably more than a little terror.

Daisy and I had a long talk about this tonight. I made sure to make it clear to her that when I say things like "I hate my life," it doesn't include her, us, our relationship, or any of that -- those things are about the only things in my life right now which are actually going right, the only things which are good. It's everything else that worries and stresses me, like being able to pay my bills and eat. Those things are the stressors; those are the things that I thought, and hoped, would be much different than they are at this point of my life. I'm one of the least entitled people on the planet; I've worked for everything I have one way or another, whether it was physical or psychological work, and for the most part I am very proud of the path I've chosen in life and the work I've done to get to where I am. I just thought I'd be a bit better off than this when it was all said and done, you know?

I've often said that it is really difficult for outsiders (meaning, people other than me, who haven't gone through what I've gone through over the years) to understand fully where I'm coming from. Especially when I see people with the same degrees as I have -- and sometimes less job experience than me -- getting good, stable jobs where they don't have to worry about bills so much, and they can drive a car that doesn't have 230,000 miles on its odometer and isn't almost 20 years old, and they can "level off" and be happy. It's not a jealousy thing; it's more of an awe and frustration. As I told Daisy tonight, I've been skirting by on the bare minimum of luck for a long, long time -- long enough to where sooner or later, it's going to run out one way or another. The fact that my car hasn't died yet is remarkable. The fact that I was able to get a few classes to teach last semester was due to a few small openings in the schedule and because Parker intervened to help out with the scheduling and get it done on time. The fact that I got forbearance on my loans was because I fought through four different sets of paperwork to get everything sent off to the servicers on time, and was still barely lucky enough to make it in before the deadline.

Overall, though, am I happy? Like, as a whole? I suppose. I mean, I'm happy enough given the circumstances. I can only control and take care of so much. Unless Daisy and/or I win the lottery, there's never going to be a time where I'm not stressed and/or worried about something going on. And unless I get a $60k a year tenured professor position where I only have to teach one class a semester, or I fall ass-backwards into a book or screenwriting deal (neither of which I'm lucky enough to have happen), I'll probably never be satisfied with my life -- but that doesn't mean I'm ungrateful for what I have. I'm not; I am incredibly grateful. It's just that I need more than what I have -- more than what I can do, it seems -- to make my problems go away.

In the past 90 minutes or so that I've been writing this, the temperature outside must have dramatically dropped off again -- it's gone down three degrees in my room over the course of the past hour (currently 59.8 degrees) and the furnace, set at 52, just kicked on again. My joints and muscles ache from the cold and I haven't even been outside in it. I really can't wait until it warms up above freezing tomorrow.

Aside from the above mentioned items, there's not a lot going on. It's really quiet here in Newton. Because of the cold, the neighborhood has been almost deathly still, and the only noises I've heard around the area haven't been people coming and going, but the honking of flocks of geese as they fly back and forth at all hours of the day and night. There's a lot of Canadian geese here in Newton; there are many ponds/lakes/low-lying wetlands in the area, and hearing or seeing massive flocks of them at any given time is common. Seeing geese back home in West Virginia was a treat, similar to seeing a hawk fly over. Here there are geese and hawks everywhere, and (amusingly enough) there are a fair number of bald eagles that live out here as well. My point is that when the weather is this cold, I think most humans have the same idea I do, and hole up in their caves until it warms up.

I read stats last night that said the last time it was this cold here was February 2011. I remember that. It was the last terrible winter we had (until this past spring, anyway, where we got two two-foot snowstorms back-to-back, and it snowed all the way into May). It was also (probably) the last time my electric bill was as high as it is this month, due to the furnace. It's not been in the single digits more than once or twice since then, let alone below zero. I don't even run the furnace in the winter most of the time unless the temperature is going to dip well below freezing; I may run it in the mornings to warm myself up when I wake up to go teach, but I turn it way down or turn it off if it's going to get up into the 40s or 50s that day. Again, I may not like it, and I may not really acclimate well to a rapid temperature shift, but after dealing with it for a few days I learn to live and deal with it, and stop feeling so cold or shivering all the time. I think it's a survival skill. At the very least, it's a coping mechanism.

Daisy told me that her car did indeed have trouble starting this morning when she came home from work, and it had a little trouble turning over tonight when she went back in. She's planning to get the battery checked and to get an oil change over the weekend, and said she needs to get more washer fluid as well. I recommended to her that, because she has to park outside 24/7, she get one of the de-icer bottles of washer fluid so that she won't have to scrape and scrape if her windows ice over.

I read a news report that said the flu is bad this year and is widespread around the area, and (in an unrelated report) someone in Pittsburgh has apparently died from swine flu, with another 8 hospitalized because of it. I can take comfort, at least, in the fact that I probably won't become ill with any sort of flu as long as I remain here in the house in my self-imposed quarantine. I often have fantasy scenarios about nationwide pandemics and quarantine orders, because it would mean that I'd suddenly no longer have to worry about going to work and paying bills or rent, since I would assume most of that stuff would be forgotten about in the instance of a terrible pandemic that kills millions. It's much like the "an asteroid is coming to kill us all" scenario -- my first thought would be woohoo, I don't have to pay my bills anymore!

It's probably sad that these are my go-to solutions for solving my problems, isn't it?

An alien invasion or zombie apocalypse would work too. Or fast, dramatic weather/climate changes like in The Day After Tomorrow. Or an apocalypse scenario like This Is The End. Those things would be sort of ideal as well, I guess. Well, except for the zombie one, since I'd probably have to fight for my life every day, but, y'know, small price to pay for freedom. Anything that would keep me from having to pay bills and go to work would be nice. It can't be one or the other; it has to be able to do both.

It's probably more statistically feasible that Daisy and/or I would win the lottery.

On that note, I'm going to bed. I've still not been sleeping well -- last night was terrible, and it wasn't due to the cold -- I just couldn't sleep. I couldn't get comfortable, the cats were always in the way (to the point where I had to move them several times) and I had aches in my muscles and joints, an arm or leg would fall asleep, etc. I don't know if it's the Bactrim giving me some weird side-effect, if it's my allergies, if it's just a general state of restlessness, or what. I just know I'd like to be able to sleep normally, soundly, and comfortably again.