Mother Nature is Fickle

Windy

It was about 72° Thursday night when I went to bed. The peepers were peeping. The wind was gusting hard and shaking the camper. And I drifted off to sleep like a baby. When I woke up yesterday morning, it was 30° and I quickly threw another blanket over me and turned on the electric blanket.

These are the kind of days that treat you with thermometer whiplash and make you wish Mother Nature would just make up her mind already. When I was growing up, I heard that vast spreads in ambient temperature can make you sick. I always thought it was an old wives tale. Working in medicine, we learned that it wasn’t going out with a wet head that made you sick…it was a virus that you picked up.

It turns out, it’s kinda sorta true. It’s not the change in temperature that makes you sick but the overall weather conditions. When it’s cold out, the air is drier. The mucus membranes in our upper airways act as a filter to catch viruses before they can get to the lungs. If those viruses hit a desert in your throat, the body can’t defend itself as well. Also, we spend more time indoors when it’s cold out and being in close proximity with others contributes to the spread of respiratory illnesses.

When it starts warming up at this time of year, everything starts to bud and grow and the air becomes inundated with pollen. It’s a lot windier when the weather changes, so if you are sensitive to pollen and have allergies, that can lead to actually getting sick, too. So…grandma was right, and so were the doctors that taught me.

By the time I sat down to write last night it was already down to the mid-30’s. I’m tough, and really love to sleep in the camper, but that’s pushing it…even for me. We’ve spent the winter staying on the cool side. I finally convinced Mr. FixIt that we really don’t need to keep the house so warm. It doesn’t hurt us a bit to put on a sweater and we sleep under an electric blanket anyway. Once I got him used to a cooler house at night, it wasn’t a very big stretch to keep the thermostat down in the parts of the house we aren’t using during the day.

Now that we’ve spent this winter tolerating much cooler temperatures in the house, I’m sure we’re going to have a heck of a time adjusting to the extreme heat and humidity of July and August. Since we’re going to Colorado this summer, I think we should go during late July to early August. Colorado is much more temperate and the evenings almost always cool off into the 70’s.

We had a lovely day yesterday. Not a lot of work got done around here. Cooking and cleaning the kitchen is a never ending job. I made some fabulous breakfast burritos yesterday morning. Large flour tortillas filled with scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, and home-canned pinto beans, rolled and placed in a casserole dish, then covered with home canned pork green chile, shredded cheddar, and home-canned salsa. I avoided the extra phosphorus and sodium that comes with processed foods and we declared they were just as good as any you could buy in a restaurant. We basically pieced the rest of the day. The older I get, the less regimented I get with the whole three square meals a day. You would never know it by looking at my weight, but I’m focusing more on healthy nutrition, hydration, exercise, and good sleep hygiene. That makes all the difference in the world in how I feel.

I did work on the project yesterday, but I didn’t seem to get a lot done. That’s ok…today’s another day. It’ll be chilly again so we’re liable to stay around the house today, too. I hope you are having a good weekend and your weather isn’t too tough.