Winterage

It's fupping freezing, to coin a Ted-ism.

This morning we had an energy audit. That means that two nice men came over and checked out the house, inside and outside and in the attic spaces, and then they put a giant fan in the front door and sucked out all the warm air and used a thermal camera to see exactly where all the cold air was coming in. All over the place, it turns out. We have so many gaps, and so little insulation, that it's the equivalent of a 3-foot window being wide open all the time. Isn't that horrifying? Imagine how much extra money we've thrown at heating and cooling bills over the past nine months. We feel pretty silly that we didn't figure this out sooner.

On the other hand we didn't realise how much we needed it until the December heating bill came in. (I use the disculpatory "we" here, but in truth I defer to B on matters both automotive and structural. Not that he necessarily knows more than I do about them, but I can't be in charge of everything. Possibly as an architect's daughter (and former denizen of the best-insulated house in Ireland) I should have been more interested in how many inches of heat-retaining material resided in our attic space, but I chose not to ponder such matters.)

Anyway, we'll probably end up with swathes more insulation, and I don't know what else to boot, and it'll cost lots up front but we'll thank ourselves next winter (and even in the summer, when perhaps the A/C will work better too). I'm amazed that people have lived in this house for so long before us and not realised how much they could save themselves by sticking in a few rolls of extra insulation, but maybe they didn't have fancy thermal cameras to show them just what was going on. (Monkey thought the thermal camera was pretty cool.)

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I'm a very bad cold-weather parent. I know I should bundle them up and take them for a walk by the lake, where we could point out, I dunno, bare branches and dead leaves and sticks and stuff, but my fingers and toes go numb at the mere thought of a walk in the woods in below-freezing conditions (and I have Reynaud's, so it really would be very little fun; more irritatingly than seriously, but it hurts in the cold). And I know some people successfully stay home without resorting to all-day TV, but I'm just not able to think up a nice afternoon-long game for my four year old and my two year old to play without my constant company, and left to their own devices there would soon be blood on the new sofa. (I leave you to judge which is the worst part of that eventuality.)

So every afternoon, post-nap, post-nap-recovery-mode, post-shoes,-socks-and-coats-application (don't discount how long that stage lasts) we pile into the car and go somewhere, even if it's just for 40 minutes. Spending 4pm to 5pm out of the house is the only thing that keeps me sane: not getting home till closer to 6.00 is even better, so long as I didn't have anything elaborate planned for dinner.

But I'm running out of things to do in this horrible weather. The groceries are procured, we've visited every Target in a 20-mile radius, and today we'll head over to Babies Is We for a big box of pullups. That's all the errands I can possibly think of. Sometimes I'll take them to one of the bigger malls just to frolic in the play area, but those are all 30 minutes' drive away (is it no coincidence that there's no nice mall in PG County?)

So tell me, what do you do with your kids when it's too cold to be out and you can't stay in another minute?