Category: Critters

So last night it was below freezing well before bedtime. The dogs came in extra early last night. They’d go out and screw around and woof at stuff that no one could see a couple more times, but it’s generally speaking that time of year where I let them in around dark and we’re all one big happy family consisting ot two dogs, five cats, and three people. Now, trying to keep everyone in that equation warm is a whole different ball game – especially since we’re going into this winter with concrete floors and still no central heat/air. (That part of the story is a bit long and complicated, and unlikely to resolve itself anytime terribly soon.)

Once again, the trio of space heaters has been deployed: one near the boy’s room (which will very soon wind up in his room), one in the master bedroom, one in the living room. It’s sort of an unspoken thing that the kitchen and my office/game room/computer room will spend the winter operating on the same principle as the control room at the TV station where I used to work: there’s stuff in those rooms that makes its own heat. (That being said, the window in the computer room urgently needs replacing – it’s one of the only windows on the house that we haven’t replaced yet, and it allows a lot of cold air in, enough that I’ll probably start closing the room off at night to limit the “damage” to that one room. I doubt the computers will overheat…

At any rate, I set the space heater in the living room up to run until it heats things up to 76 degrees, and then shut itself off. That’s kind of an academic limit, since it got below 20 last night, and with the concrete floor, it was struggling to maintain 70 degrees in the living room.

Yeah, winter’s gonna be fun in this house. I bet we’re less than a week away from Gabby no longer complaining about her kennel being situated next to the clothes dryer. Right about now, that particular spot sounds like some primo real estate.… Read more

Winter seems to be arriving ahead of schedule. When it gets down to where water outside will freeze, the dogs come in. Gabby is still too hyper to not be kenneled, while Xena just hangs out by my door. I put a space heater in the doorway to my bathroom tonight to heat that “hallway” connecting the bathroom, my room, Little E’s room, and the rest of the house; it’s more of a glorified alcove than an actual hallway. I’d put a blanket on the concrete floor for Xena to sleep on – she likes her blanket, and this is her blanket.

And this was our conversation:

Mrs.: You’re going to put this space heater here?
Me: Yeah.
Mrs.: Are you going to move Xena’s blanket out into the living room?
Me: Nope.
Mrs.: She won’t like that heater blowing right on her.
Me: I’ve moved things around so the blanket won’t catch on fire. She’ll still sleep in the hallway. She’ll be fine.

Fast forward a couple of hours later…

Xena (hanging off the edge of the blanket so the heater blows right on her): ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz… Read more