Cold Person
Dec. 1st, 2024 06:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
disappointed_lesbianWith the recent temperature drop, keeping the bedroom window closed at all times isn't enough for me to stay warm throughout the night. Last night was the last straw: I woke up at midnight, so cold that I lay for hours in a stupor, unable to even think well enough to figure out what to do for myself. I finally thought to turn on the heater, but it was almost time to get up for the morning by then. I was swaddled in a flannel sheet inside my heavy cotton blanket that I've sewn up into a sleeping bag liner, inside a hemp sleeping bag, under a throw, a blanket, and a quilt, while wearing a hat. Still couldn't stay warm. It isn't even winter yet.
So I thought it time to buy yet more bedclothes. I figured I needed something thick and heavy, such as a quilt. The problem is that all my bedclothes have to be made of natural fibers, and most bedclothes are made of polyester. Quilts, comforters, etc. are expensive enough as it is, but 100% cotton versions are astronomical in cost.
Even with more bedclothes, I still need some type of heating at bed time to doze off, so I figured I'd try to kill two pedestrians with one SUV by purchasing an electric bedspread of some kind. I've been using an iron to heat up the foot of my sleeping bag liner, and I've now burned myself with the iron several times, so I want to stop using it. This is the same thing that happened when I was heating my bedclothes with rocks from my toaster oven. Sleepiness, desperate chilliness, and uncovered heating sources don't mix.
A 100% cotton electric bedspread is a unicorn; electric bedclothes are even more likely to be made of polyester than non-electric ones. Plus most heated bedclothes are blankets, and I figured I'd need something heavier than that. I did find one such blanket online, but it was being sold in Europe and likely wouldn't have fit my electrical outlet.
So I took the bus to the mall and went through five department stores searching. Very few 100% cotton or linen (I thought linen was made of cotton but I guess not) bedclothes, none of them heated. The only affordable cotton bedclothes I could find were throws (which are too small), sheets (probably too thin?), and the same blanket I already have. Manufacturers really have some nerve selling giant puffs of polyester for over a hundred dollars. Quality materials are sadly lacking from a lot of the garbage sold in this country. We really are a plastic culture.
I spent three hours shopping and going from store to store, then I was so weak from lack of food that my movements slowed down and I could barely think straight. I finally decided that I'd wait for my blood test results and maybe I could take a vitamin that would warm me up so that I wouldn't have to spend money I don't have. Not paying my energy bill again might be an option, but it's already fifty bucks past due so I'd rather not go that route. I also decided that I'd try wrapping myself in my blanket inside the sleeping bag instead of laying the blanket over my body outside the sleeping bag. Despite being a child's size, the sleeping bag has some space in it, space that I cannot heat up with my non-existant body heat, space that gets filled with cold air maybe. The blanket will, I hope, take up more space and trap more heat close to my body.
Being thinner, it is also easier than the sleeping bag liner to heat up: I can turn on the living room heater, set the blanket on top of it, and let it heat up while I carry out the rest of my bedtime routine. I gave up heating the sleeping bag liner on the heater for using the iron; now, I'll go back to the safer heating routine.
This is all so absurdly complicated. I really cannot take another night of three or less hours of sleep because eating hurts my stomach now (and will worsen) unless I eat processed food, of which I don't have much. I lucked out and found two bags of pita left in the laundry room of my apartment complex, and, for a few days, that helped fill the gap in my caloric intake. I can have only a couple of bites of most of my fruit before the pain starts.
I cannot find any affordable compression gloves. I gave up on looking for compression socks. My local pharmacy has a compression thigie for the hand and wrist; it costs seventeen bucks per hand. I decided to try a poor person's compression: rubber bands. Then as I was putting them on this morning, I thought about rubber bands cutting off circulation, which would worsen my problem with cold extremities. But I tried them anyways. I took the rubber bands off my wrists (which, I assume, would isolate blood from my hands even more) and crossed two across my palms. I put a band around one of my feet instead of around my ankle. It was an experiment. The rubber bands didn't seem to do much except cut down somewhat on the pain by numbing my hand and foot.
I went to the bathroom in the third deparment store and had a good look in a well-lighted mirror. My skin is worse than it even looks here at home. I felt down but also kind of numb, maybe because I'm kind of used to this. I've had problems with skin discoloration all my life; it started when I was an adolescent but the trash who raised me never took me to a dermatologist or anything. But that's not the only thing I'm used to; I'm used to things going wrong and being too poor to fix them, at least not in a timely fashion. I always have to spread my expenses out over months even though I never buy anything terribly expensive.
So I bought my last facial peel a couple of days ago. I've gone through pretty much all the peels that can give me any good results here, in this climate. It's glycolic acid, one I'm familiar with, and it's supposed to work relatively quickly. I think most of the discoloration I have now is only rather shallow in terms of skin depth. I've also had noticeable results by using just one layer of lactic acid. So I'm hopeful that things will improve soon. But how soon, that's always the question. And how much improvement will there be.
Thinking about my issues with the cold this morning, I was reminded of the novel Cold People that I read earlier this year. I mused that if I, like the characters, were faced with the prospect of spending the rest of my life in Antarctica, I'd likely stay put and take my chances with the aliens (who coerced humankind south with a display of technological superiority). My quality of life on that continent would be ABYSMAL. I wouldn't be able to even venture outdoors, no matter how much and what kind of clothing or equipment I had. With my hands getting cold enough to ache underneath two pairs of gloves in the California autumn, I'd be helpless against the Antarctic climate.
Plus my chronic vitamin D3 deficiency would likely kill me in the dark winters. But before all that happened, my fellow (male) humans would kill me first. I'd rather be on Jupiter than packed onto any Earthbound continent with the mass of surviving mankind.
So I thought it time to buy yet more bedclothes. I figured I needed something thick and heavy, such as a quilt. The problem is that all my bedclothes have to be made of natural fibers, and most bedclothes are made of polyester. Quilts, comforters, etc. are expensive enough as it is, but 100% cotton versions are astronomical in cost.
Even with more bedclothes, I still need some type of heating at bed time to doze off, so I figured I'd try to kill two pedestrians with one SUV by purchasing an electric bedspread of some kind. I've been using an iron to heat up the foot of my sleeping bag liner, and I've now burned myself with the iron several times, so I want to stop using it. This is the same thing that happened when I was heating my bedclothes with rocks from my toaster oven. Sleepiness, desperate chilliness, and uncovered heating sources don't mix.
A 100% cotton electric bedspread is a unicorn; electric bedclothes are even more likely to be made of polyester than non-electric ones. Plus most heated bedclothes are blankets, and I figured I'd need something heavier than that. I did find one such blanket online, but it was being sold in Europe and likely wouldn't have fit my electrical outlet.
So I took the bus to the mall and went through five department stores searching. Very few 100% cotton or linen (I thought linen was made of cotton but I guess not) bedclothes, none of them heated. The only affordable cotton bedclothes I could find were throws (which are too small), sheets (probably too thin?), and the same blanket I already have. Manufacturers really have some nerve selling giant puffs of polyester for over a hundred dollars. Quality materials are sadly lacking from a lot of the garbage sold in this country. We really are a plastic culture.
I spent three hours shopping and going from store to store, then I was so weak from lack of food that my movements slowed down and I could barely think straight. I finally decided that I'd wait for my blood test results and maybe I could take a vitamin that would warm me up so that I wouldn't have to spend money I don't have. Not paying my energy bill again might be an option, but it's already fifty bucks past due so I'd rather not go that route. I also decided that I'd try wrapping myself in my blanket inside the sleeping bag instead of laying the blanket over my body outside the sleeping bag. Despite being a child's size, the sleeping bag has some space in it, space that I cannot heat up with my non-existant body heat, space that gets filled with cold air maybe. The blanket will, I hope, take up more space and trap more heat close to my body.
Being thinner, it is also easier than the sleeping bag liner to heat up: I can turn on the living room heater, set the blanket on top of it, and let it heat up while I carry out the rest of my bedtime routine. I gave up heating the sleeping bag liner on the heater for using the iron; now, I'll go back to the safer heating routine.
This is all so absurdly complicated. I really cannot take another night of three or less hours of sleep because eating hurts my stomach now (and will worsen) unless I eat processed food, of which I don't have much. I lucked out and found two bags of pita left in the laundry room of my apartment complex, and, for a few days, that helped fill the gap in my caloric intake. I can have only a couple of bites of most of my fruit before the pain starts.
I cannot find any affordable compression gloves. I gave up on looking for compression socks. My local pharmacy has a compression thigie for the hand and wrist; it costs seventeen bucks per hand. I decided to try a poor person's compression: rubber bands. Then as I was putting them on this morning, I thought about rubber bands cutting off circulation, which would worsen my problem with cold extremities. But I tried them anyways. I took the rubber bands off my wrists (which, I assume, would isolate blood from my hands even more) and crossed two across my palms. I put a band around one of my feet instead of around my ankle. It was an experiment. The rubber bands didn't seem to do much except cut down somewhat on the pain by numbing my hand and foot.
I went to the bathroom in the third deparment store and had a good look in a well-lighted mirror. My skin is worse than it even looks here at home. I felt down but also kind of numb, maybe because I'm kind of used to this. I've had problems with skin discoloration all my life; it started when I was an adolescent but the trash who raised me never took me to a dermatologist or anything. But that's not the only thing I'm used to; I'm used to things going wrong and being too poor to fix them, at least not in a timely fashion. I always have to spread my expenses out over months even though I never buy anything terribly expensive.
So I bought my last facial peel a couple of days ago. I've gone through pretty much all the peels that can give me any good results here, in this climate. It's glycolic acid, one I'm familiar with, and it's supposed to work relatively quickly. I think most of the discoloration I have now is only rather shallow in terms of skin depth. I've also had noticeable results by using just one layer of lactic acid. So I'm hopeful that things will improve soon. But how soon, that's always the question. And how much improvement will there be.
Thinking about my issues with the cold this morning, I was reminded of the novel Cold People that I read earlier this year. I mused that if I, like the characters, were faced with the prospect of spending the rest of my life in Antarctica, I'd likely stay put and take my chances with the aliens (who coerced humankind south with a display of technological superiority). My quality of life on that continent would be ABYSMAL. I wouldn't be able to even venture outdoors, no matter how much and what kind of clothing or equipment I had. With my hands getting cold enough to ache underneath two pairs of gloves in the California autumn, I'd be helpless against the Antarctic climate.
Plus my chronic vitamin D3 deficiency would likely kill me in the dark winters. But before all that happened, my fellow (male) humans would kill me first. I'd rather be on Jupiter than packed onto any Earthbound continent with the mass of surviving mankind.
