Now Playing: Chopin. Again.

I am frozen as fucking permafrost.
Chilled as a glacial crust.
Algid, arctic,
below freezing,
below zero, benumbed, biting,
bitter, blasting, bleak, boreal, brisk, brumal,
chill, chilled, cool,
crisp, cutting, freezing,
frigid, frore, frosty, frozen,
gelid, glacial, hiemal,
hyperborean, icebox,
iced, icy, inclement,
intense, keen, nipping, nippy,
numbed, numbing, one-dog night,
penetrating, piercing, polar, raw,
rimy, severe, sharp, shivery,
sleety, snappy, snowy,
stinging,
wintry
cold.

Okay, so maybe "I am inclement" doesn't work.
(Actually, that line might be truer than the rest....)

I've been sleeping under two duvets, in woolly socks, PJ's, a hoodie, and two hot cats.
I blame the water system - two mornings in a row there's been no hot water. I only found this out by running the showera while then sticking limbs under the raw biting jet ... agony. I've been cold, smelly and greasy for days.
It's working now, though; I tried to heat myself up by whacking the temperature up to a climax, running it for ages then jumping straight in (believe me, the mornings have taught me what a risk this is). It was squealing level hot. I sat on the shower floor in the heat, trying to accord every different bit of my body it's proportionate time under the best bits, and counting bars in the mist of how many people I'd ever been really in love with. Yeah, it was *that* good.
After, I was too happy and chilled out to dry my hair, which eventually froze into tiny ice crystals of pain, rendering me cold and grumpy and stiff all over again.
Jatb sent me some gut-rotting firewater from Iceland. (brennivin?) So if this post rambles insanely, you can blame her, cos I drank the lot. [Thank you, jatb, it's disgusting, but it makes your insides burn. When they sack me for smelling like a roasted tramp tomorrow, I'll be blaming you...]
Anyway, I tried cooking three different meals, in the grill and the oven, to maximise the heat sources. I actually hovered my cold bum over the grill. Twice.
This must be what it feels like to be really really old. I'm sure the Werthers grandad warms his bum over the grill, too. Probably in mixed company, looking at his creepily beatific smile. Nobody could get *that* much pleasure from a toffee?
The oven didn't warm the room up much, but eating three times the amount of normal food helped a bit. I've been getting too underweight, through the time honoured method of not really eating, so it's cool to stuff myself silly. Petite is buying me a slap-up lunch tomorrow, that might be warming. I gave her #2 towards it. Heh.
I also climbed over ten feet of old crap in the hallway, to totter precariously onto half-rotted old unfixed shelves and pull the attic hatch shut. Given how scary attics are in the movies, plus the perilous twenty foot drop below, this is a miracle. It was really heavy and dirty, too. Feeling proud of myself for that gave me two minutes more warmth. Enough warmth to foolishly relinquish the BPNSEA sweater, and feel only minorly frosted over in the hoodie and PJ's.
The heating is turned up to maximum, and I'm crouching to blog by the radiator. I think I might be crouched in this position for life, now. It's blistering hot (well, at the bottom of the radiator it is), and if I move even a foot away, the contrast makes it feel as if I'm trapped deep in the glacier, two feet from a mammoth.
Worlds away from this summer's heatwave.