this post has no cohesive theme

{As I look back at the post I just wrote, I can't help but wonder how my initial plans to just jot a few lines turned into an epic novel... I am such a rambler.}

This is probably one of the warmest places I've ever lived during Winter...and yet it has felt like the longest winter of my life. I don't remember if I've talked (read: complained) about this on the blog, but pisos in Andalucia are F-R-E-E-Z-I-N-G. They are built to keep in the cool in the miserably hot summers, but they do just as good of a job at keeping the cold in in the winter. Add the fact that our floors are marble and it's the worst. It didn't really get cold outside until late November, but starting early October my roommate and I began freezing in the piso. I mean, I can see my breath inside most days. At first we just had to suffer. Then our landlord brought us our brasero. Guys, how have I not written a love letter to braseros here yet? Although I firmly believe that my piso may be the coldest of any here in the south, all houses/pisos are pretty cold. So what did the Spanish do? They invented braseros.

{TANGENT:}

A brasero is basically a huge fire hazard that I love and can't live without. You take a heater. You stick it under a table. You cover the table with a very thick blanket/table-cloth hybrid (called a faldilla, more or less). Ta-da brasero! Then, you sit with your family/roommate/whoever around the brasero. And you never leave. Seriously. When I come home everyday the first thing I or my roommate do is turn the brasero on. Even the private lessons I give at people's homes are all conducted around their braseros. And when you have to get up to get something, you basically shiver and cry.

Right, this post is getting off-track, if there really was a track at all. To sum up: Sometimes it's happy sunshiney and warm outside but it's about 30 degrees inside so I stick my icicle feet under the faldilla and am happy and content all day as long as I don't have to get up to eat or use the bathroom or what have you. Of course, the problem is what happens at night when you have to leave the brasero. Turns out we also have central heating in our piso (kind of rare for Spain) BUT it's freakishly expensive so we never use it. We turn it on an hour or so before bed to heat up the rooms but then it goes off when we sleep. Well, without fail I have woken up every morning since about November 1st around 6a.m. just freezing so hard I want to cry. I sleep under about 4 blankets, on fleece sheets, in a sweatshirt and sweatpants (before Spain I never slept in more than shorts and a tank top!), and it got so ridiculous that the hat my mom sent me to wear in bed--I actually started wearing it! Anyway, so I would wake up and feel my face and laugh/cry at the fact that it was freezing to the touch and how pathetic it all was and then I would rush down the hall, my bare feet on that icy marble floor, and turn on the heater. It was that or not sleep for the precious two hours I had left before I had to get up.

WELL. Two nights ago I made a legen--waitforit!--dary discovery and I swear I danced for joy in my hallway at 1a.m. and may have cried a few happy tears. On one hand, maybe I should feel pathetic and depressed that I didn't make this obvious discovery sooner, say like 3 months ago, and saved myself so much misery--but whatever, I'll just stick with blissfully happy. GUYS: My central heating control panal has a TIMER. As in, I can program it to go on automatically at around the time I usually wake up from the cold! No more 6a.m. runs down the hall while my tears freeze to my face! Sure, I still have to sleep like an eskimo, but at least I can get out of bed in a semi-toasty room.

If I had to pick out what the central message from this long rambly post is I would have to say it's this: I am so ready for Spring.