A change in the weather

I know I'm a weather wimp. Living here in the paradise that is Venice, California, I have become accustomed to temperatures that don't deviate much from the 70s, and I like it that way. So I have been suffering lately with night time temperatures down in the forties and daytime temperatures in the high 50s.

My Minnesota grandkids were just here, and they thought it was positively tropical. They ran around with bare feet and no jackets and pooled their walking-around money to reach a total of $130 which they they offered to their mother as a bribe to move the family here. Their dad said he'd consider it if they added a few zeros to that sum.

Anyway, I've been cold. My house is not designed for cold weather. There is a wall heater in the hall. It gets the hall nice and toasty and leaves the rest of the house pretty chilly. A little heat seeps into the living room but none reaches my drafty office. And now we finally get to the point of this post. It has been too cold to work comfortably at the computer. My keyboard keys are cold. My fingers are cold. My brain is cold.

And this brings me to the image at the beginning of the post. That is Henry Hagglyhoagly, the romantic hero of one of Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga Stories. I loved these stories as a little girl living in Minnesota, and I love them still.

Henry Hagglyhoagly was in love with Susan Slackentwist, and he was walking down a country road to court her. "Why is it so bitter cold weather?" Henry Hagglyhoagly asked himself, "if I say many bitter bitters it is not so bitter as the cold wind and the cold weather." Fortunately he had his good wool mittens on. At last he gets to Susan's home and prepares to serenade her with his Spanish Spinnish Splishy guitar.

"And now," he asked his mittens, "shall I take you off or keep you on? If I take you off the cold wind of the bitter cold weather will freeze my hands so stiff and bitter cold my fingers will be too stiff to play the guitar. I will play with mittens on."

Which he did. Susan Slackentwist listened and opened her window and threw him a snow-bird feather. And for years afterward many a sweetheart in the Rootabaga Country told her lover, "If you wish to marry me let me hear you under my window on a winter night playing the guitar with wool yarn mittens on."

I actually TRIED typing with my gloves on. Not a successful effort.

Fortunately, the weather man predicts a change in the weather, with a Santa Ana condition bringing temperatures up in the 80s to LA by the weekend.