Reptilian Torpor vs Banshee

Once, when we were in grade school, my brother inexplicably covered himself in bandaids one night-- he was fascinated with war stories and it may have been yet another of his attempts to simulate realistic wounds, (other attempts involved my help and lots of my mom's expensive make-up)-- and in the morning when my mother discovered what he'd done, she had to rip them off. You can't have a kid going to school wearing a whole box of bandaids. Of course, the bandaid adhesive had plenty of time to bond with his sleep-softened skin, so when the ripping commenced, he screamed and screamed. My mom responded with what she usually said when one of us was howling, which was, "My God, pipe down-- the neighborhood's going to think I'm beating you over here."

I'm remembering this story because Pants has said something similar to me several times in the past few days. I don't know what it is about cold weather, but something about it gets me all screamy. We keep the house at a chilly, economical 65 degrees (which is way better than the last place which HAD NO HEAT), and I find myself usually in one of two modes: slack-jawed reptilian torpor or banshee. Both are strategies to stay warm.

The reptilian torpor involves a book, a steaming cup of something or other (I've stupidly gone on another caffeine embargo), and a giant blanket, and then I'm set for about three hours, or until my bladder fills and Pants's camping logic kicks in-- "If you hold your pee when you're cold, more of your body's energy goes to heating the pee than to heating you."

Banshee is entirely different. Banshee mode is what's kept me going for runs even though it's hatefully cold outside and I have to wear a hat and gloves and sniffle out all my body's moisture through my raw, red nose. Banshee mode also involves frenetic, in-house movement, usually of little purpose. I chase the cat and then the dog and then the cat again. I yell at them both, usually nonsense shouts meant to imitate their own animal sounds, and then I chase Pants and try to hug him and stick my freezing fingers into the lining of his pants. If he's trying to get something done on the computer, I cling to his back and make zombie sounds and threaten to chomp on his delicious brains. This would be cute maybe once, but I do it a lot.

A while ago, Pants took me to the flight line to watch Hornets take off. They have to sit there in line on the runway for a while and let their engines run up to a whine that's both piercing and thunderous, and meanwhile the pilot is doing all of his take-off checklists and the lineman is running around underneath him and signaling all of his checks. It's a big production, getting ready to move. And then the jet taxis to the top of the runway and crouches there, waiting, whining, an electric chromatic scale of anticipation sizzling out all around it, and then it starts to roll and in a ridiculously short moment it goes from being still to being a streak, an explosion, and then a dot on the horizon.

This is how I justify my horrifically annoying winter movement dichotomy-- I'm either parked in the hangar, all buckled down in my spot, or I'm spooling up for mach speed. This probably also goes a long way towards explaining what's the matter with my chest and shoulders right now.

As a Christmas present to one another, Pants and I finally decided to purchase a Satisfactory Bed to replace our torture-iffic Stearns & Foster newlywed bed. Despite buying "top of the line" before and being so thoroughly bitch-slapped for it, we decided to go all out and buy a Tempurpedic bed, and despite the fact that I'm in exceptional pain right now, I still give the bed a confident thumbs up.

The literature accompanying our new, debt-enhancing bed promises that though we may experience some initial discomfort, we should give the bed a full month as our bodies slowly adjust to a more salubrious sleeping alignment. I feel like I'm being made into something out of the X-Men. Every night I lay down feeling pretty OK, and then I feel the foam slowly heating and morphing to my stooped shoulders and my virtually table-flat lumbar curve (I've seen it in an X-ray) and then-- is it possible?-- slowly putting a nice warm, foamy knee into my lower back and oh so slowly jacking me right in the kidneys. Then it moves up to my shoulders, and it's like a giant foam fist punching me in a frame-by-frame shot between the shoulder blades, snapping my neck back into something resembling its correct, standing up straight position. Who knew postural alignment could be so sneakily violent? I comfort myself with the thought that in a month's time, I will be a full inch taller and capable of jumping over a car from a standstill.

But then there's the pet chasing and the zombie chomping and the random shouting of song lyrics, and who knows-- maybe the extra energy is from the deeper sleep I'm supposed to be getting-- but all of that torques up my new posture all over again and I feel like I do now. Like I'm wearing big iron football shoulder pads that are secured to my frame by two iron railroad spikes right below my collar bones.

Apparently something similar is happening to Pants, but, as is typical with him, he's chosen one pithy phrase to express it rather than my opera of moans: "It's lots of Tempur and not much pedic so far."