Cold Feet

Behold the glorious trinity of foot happiness! Blanket + fuzzy slippers + hot-water bottle!

Right, so. I live in The Land of Cold. This much is very clear. My roommates, having grown up in The Land of Cold, tend to keep the heater on low during the winter and wear sweaters around the house. I, having grown up in The Land of Spontaneous Brush Fires, am not so used to this (though I have spent winters in Boston and Moscow, so I knew what I was getting myself into, thank you very much). When I moved up here, I decided that I'd roll with it - learn to wear sweaters during the winter and acclimate my wussy Texan tushy to the realities of my new climate. I should emphasize that my roommates have made it perfectly clear that I'm welcome to crank up the heat whenever I want - they're not ogres or misers by any means. But for financial, environmental and macho reasons, I've decided to acclimate.

It's worked quite well, actually. During the day and before I go to bed, I'm perfectly comfortable walking around in my gloriously long sweater-duster and fuzzy slippers. It's at night that the suffering begins. When I climb into bed, it is so cold under my covers that I have to lie there unmoving until my little patch of sheets warm up. Only then can I tentatively venture to roll over or otherwise shift position. On a cold night, my feet never warm up. I can bundle the rest of me up in nice, warm PJs, I can even wear socks to bed, but my feet stay cold. The warmth never quite makes it all the way down to the foot of the bed.

I knew I needed a hot-water bottle. More economical than cranking the heat, charmingly old-fashioned and I hear they're good for cramps, too! So imagine my surprise when every grocery and drug store I went to was completely bereft of hot-water bottles. I'm not sure "bereft" is the right word, it seems to imply that there were some to begin with. They had electric heating pads, electric blankets, even those weird stick-on hot/cold pads, but no hot-water bottles. Finally, I went to a Target in Minnesota. My boyfriend, who shall remain nameless, and I searched every possible aisle to no avail. We finally asked the woman behind the pharmacy counter if she had any. "No! Yes! Special order!" Someone had to special order hot water bottles in order to find any within a two-state radius. HELLO!!! HAS ANYONE ELSE NOTICED THAT IT GETS EFFING COLD HERE IN JANUARY??? I mean I know I grew up in Texas, but this can't just be me.


This is the hot-water bottle I had been using. Harlot worked very well, all things considered, but she had one chief draw-back: she wouldn't pre-warm the bed. Harlot is completely uninterested in taking the brunt of a freezing bed for the woman who feeds her. She prefers it to be a more collaborative effort. I warm her up while she warms me up. This works tolerably well until she loses interest. This new water bottle I can slip under the covers 10 or so minutes before I go to bed. I can be comfortable from the moment I snuggle under the covers and never have that "want to roll over but don't want to re-warm a new patch of sheets" let-down that keeps you from drifting off unmolested. Didn't leak (of course it didn't leak, but I was paranoid). Its one draw-back is that it does get quite hot to the touch. It keeps me comfortable all night as long as my feet don't actually make contact with it. Seriously, though, not only were my sheets still warm when I woke up this morning, the bottle itself was still pleasantly warm. I'm quite impressed. And so is Harlot.