Yesterday, the news here in central Florida was all about the weather. It was going to be cold. Coldest winter in five years, which is farther back than even grandma can imagine.

Check on your elderly neighbors, my arse. WE'RE the ones who need looking after.

Well, I dutifully covered up the lemon tree to prevent it being murdered by old man winter, and put on a sweater. And socks. And heavier pants. By 11pm I had a jacket on. Now, I was pretty sure we had some sort of a heating device built into our antique air conditioning system, but I remembered that last year, going to the effort of firing it up resulted in the smell of burnt dust that had accumulated over the preceeding eleven months. Probably full of termite poo and stuff too.

I really had meant to launder the spare blanket, but it's been out in the garage for a month now, and therefore has slipped from my mind. When one wakes up at 3am and freezing (in spite of three small, furry space heaters we call dogs on the bed), fumbling one's way to the garage for a smelly, dirty blanket is not even slightly appealing.

I mean, I'm from CANADA, I have handled a bit of cold. I have lived through winters as cold as -50 degrees, working outside 4-6 hours a day. I can put up with a cold snap in freaking Orlando, right?

Wrong.

It is amazing how fast the human body adapts to the nice, warm conditions down here. All the inner ice has melted. Not one cell in my entire body remembered what to do in the winter. The seal fat that I dutifully packed on over the holidays did not do one bit of good. It just sat there and jiggled when I shivered. Fat people do NOT stay warmer, so I have one less excuse for donuts now.

I slept fitfully until loud, annoying noises started coming from the living room at about 4am. I am guessing at the time, but it was BLACK everywhere.

The power was out. That means the UPS's on our computers were happily yelling the electronic version of "HEY, REMEMBER US?" "YEAH, SEE, WE'RE KEEPING YOUR SYSTEMS ON HERE AT 4AM." and "AREN'T YOU GLAD YOU BOUGHT US NOW?". I tried to ignore them, but you can only listen to it for so long... "HELLO!!! HOW ABOUT SOME VALIDATION HERE!"

Of course, being ever prepared, we did not have a flashlight in a nightstand, like sane Floridians have in case of our regular hurricanes, floods, tornados and... power outages. I stumbled out to the living room, tripped over the X-Box cord, hit my leg on the frozen wooden arm of the couch (which at least told me I was heading in the right direction), and shut down the computers. The damn UPS's though, they were still triumphantly meeping. Loudly. Incessantly. I got on my hands and knees and poked around for the shutoff switches in such a manner that I am sure I barely escaped electrocuting myself, and then went back to bed.

Too cold to sleep, my mind started going through various scenarios as to why the power had failed. Could I have forgotten to pay the bill? Nah, it was automatically paid. Maybe I missed a late notice in the ten pounds of junk mail I throw out every week? Hey wait, didn't I get a new credit card and the old one expired last month? No... the power is paid directly from our bank account. It is now 4:45am and I can't stand it any more. I pull on my coat and go out the front door to see if anyone else's power is out.

Misery loves company, and I was inordinately glad to see that not one porch light or nightlight glimmered down the street. HAH! Now I could safely blame the power company and curse them out roundly (and ineffectually).

Eventually the power came back on. I knew because it jolted me awake from the verge of passing away from hypothermia with a whole new sound. That of the fish tank pumps running loudly and angrily on air. They needed priming. At 6:15am in the morning. By now it was light enough for me to see that it was 48 degrees IN THE HOUSE. I got the fish tanks burbling and crawled back to bed again.

By now, I felt worse than I did early on New Year's Day, and believe me, and that was bad.

As Alluvian hadn't had the decency to stir all night (something about being raised in Green Bay, Wisconsin and being a Packer fan makes one truly immune to cold), I kicked him out right at 8am. He never said a word about the temperature as he had his morning bath and got dressed. I was DYING meanwhile. I hate him some days. He did make the heatery-thingy on our air conditioner work though, through some Engineer-based Hoodoo that I've never mastered. By noon it was a balmy 65 degrees in here.

Now you can tell me all about your snowstorms and frozen block heaters and shovelling and stuff.
I don't care, I have a warm puppy on my lap.

I hate winter.