cold hands, warm heart?!

Today's naked blog is a response to some Facebook comments - is that cheating?  I dunno...but the answer seems germane to the focus here, so off we go!


I shared this last night as I was going to bed:

Settling in to sleep. Hoodie, with hood up....check. Double-thick wool socks...check. Tonight's new addition: gloves....ohhhhh my hands are loving me right now. Snugglin' down under 2 heavy blankets...nighty night from the land of middle age....

Some thought this was an issue of my apartment thermostat.  Let me clarify!

When I was young, I loved to run around in bare feet in all weather.  If you stopped by my house in a deep January freeze, I was running around in sweats and naked toes.  If I just needed to run outside to the mailbox in March or November, I was as likely to do it barefooted as to bother with shoes.  I was comfy that way.  But in the last few years, my extremities aren't as tolerant of all temperatures as they once were.

This boils down to:  I generally don't do bare feet at all.  I need at least slippers and/or a blanket over my feet at all times.  I wear heavy wool socks to bed (sometimes with other socks underneath them), or they perceive cold as *pain* and keep me awake. (Equally strange, and I don't know if it's related:  in the last year or so, my feet have become mostly intolerant of the feeling of my bedcovers against them...it's kind of a fingernails-on-the-chalkboard thing...)

If you've sat very long with me anywhere, you may have noticed that I am constantly tucking my hands in my armpits, in my pockets, under my legs or butt...a 70 (or even 75) degree room feels great to the rest of my body (I keep my place between 70 and 75), but it makes my hands uncomfortably cold.  If it were socially acceptable and I wouldn't become some sort of mutant freak in the world's eyes, I'd wear gloves pretty much around the clock at all times other than the hottest part of summer.  

This is not a problem I can fix with the apartment thermostat.  If I got my hands and feet all the way warm with room temp, the rest of me would be busting out in massive sweat...I'd be living in a sauna.  

The hoodie, I've discovered recently, holds the heat from evaporating out of my head, which somehow (don't ask me how, I don't know) helps my hands and feet not to feel quite so cold.  So in the night I MIGHT toss off the covers on more than one occasion (and inevitably go chasing after them again), but even then, I'm not tempted to take the hood off.   Again, if it were socially acceptable, I'd probably wear a stocking cap around the clock most of the time as well (but I'm thinking that doesn't present well in the CEO's office, eh?)  

So I guess 45 is bringing me to the place of understanding why old folks keep their places so blasted hot - some of just age that way! 

Beware mocking...your turn might be next!  LOLOL