I Was Complaining, But Then I Started Thinking About Gravy

There was nothing to do Sunday but turn the heat on.

I gave it a good run – it is mid-October, after all – but did not break last year’s record. It’s not like there was money riding on it, but still. One likes to stretch one’s limits.

It’s a perversity specific to those of us with four seasons, I think, this denial of the temperature changes; but there comes a time when the house cools at night and never truly regains the heat necessary to live comfortably, a time when you must go outside to warm up.

A time when you must take a good, hard look at the number of layers of clothing you’re willing to wear in the house, perhaps have a good cry – and then turn your furnace on.

A comedy sketch has taken up residence in my mind recently, one I’ve tentatively titled “Minnesota Strip Tease”. In it, a woman seductively removes her scarf, sweater, long-sleeved shirt, camisole, trousers, leggings, slippers, et cetera, the scene finally ending with the hopping, one-legged removal of her socks and her goose-pimpled, barefooted dash across the ice-cold hardwood floor to the bed.

Winter is dead sexy.

But there’s no escaping it, is there? Because fall has come; and each day is progressively colder, each day is just a little bit darker than the one before it.

We’ve nothing to live for but holiday parties, piles of blankets, big wooly socks, cashmere berets and liberally applied gravies of various types…

Mmm. Gravies.

I'm sorry. Where was I, again? Something about parties and gravy and gravy parties, wasn't it?