Morning all and welcome to Friday. It has been a good week, but I have to say I am thrilled to reach the end of it. It has been a calm week, but a week of catching up on everything that didn’t get done on the not so calm weeks that came before. But soon, soooooon, the weekend will arrive. Before then, there is the prompt. Ready? Then let’s go. Set those timers and wiggle those brains. The Friday prompt begins,.
Not what I expected when i sat down, but I think I have a story where I can use this actually. I needed a bit of a transition and I think with some fiddling this could help fill the gap. So woot for me.
Friday, September 15th:The heating came on in the night.
The heating came on in the night. While it was a little too warm, there was relief in it. Alice flipped the heavier comforter off of her and slept with just the sheet rather than moving to adjust the thermostat. For the last few weeks, the temperatures dropped low, but not low enough to kick the heat on. By day, the temps were also high enough to not trigger the heat but not high enough to trigger the air conditioning. As a result the air became slate and close.
During the day it wasn’t as big a deal. Although she worked from home and was in the house during the day, it felt less problematic. She could open the windows and turn on the fans. Even without any wind, the fans kept the air moving and cause some of the outside air to draw in.
The temperature was a little on the warm side, but she was happy to wear lighter weight clothes and deal with that rather than accept the close, non-circulating air. At night however her inner paranoia wouldn’t let her sleep with the windows open. If she slept on the second story then she would consider it, but the one story bungalow had no second story and she knew there was no way she would be able to sleep with a window open in an easy to access level.
Alice lived in a decent neighborhood and there had never been tales of late night burgularies, but she thought the open window might be too tempting and she didn’t want to be the one to start tales of such suburban horrors. So when night fell, she closed all of the windows, but even with the fans on, it was poor circulation.
The same thing happened every year, and yet each year it seemed to catch her by surprise, this few week period of change over. It happened twice a year, Spring and Fall, and yet somehow she was never prepared. Always she spent the first week thinking she was coming down with some sort of seasonal cold or allergy attack. She would sleep poorly and wake up stuffy.
Then she would realize why. If realization brought relief or at least the ability to adjust she would. All it brought was the understanding that she didn’t need medication.
‘But it is almost over,’ she told herself. She was slightly sweaty, but her morning shower took care of that easily enough. ‘Small price to pay,’ she told herself. After her shower, she stripped the bed of the sweaty sheets and remade them with new ones while the old went to the hamper. She knew that for the first week of the heat kicking in in the night, she would actually use all of her extra sheet sets instead of taking one of the bed at the end of the week, running it through the laundry with the rest of her clothes, and putting it back on the bed.
It would mean an extra load of laundry, but she would be able to breathe better. To remind herself, she took a deep breath through her nose. It was free and clear for the first time in nearly a month. ‘worth the extra laundry,’ she decided.
Feeling better than usual, Alice dressed for the day and moved to the kitchen to full her coffee cup. As she sipped the cup, she went through the list of necessary morning tasks. She finished her coffee, refilled it and took it and her task list to her home office. In a better mood than she had been in a while, she started her day.
Ten til Midnight 