Day 324: A Tropical Winter in Sweden

I usually like to write first and post images at the end but with this particular picture I felt the visual effects were needed up front. For many of you this photo may not mean as much since you have, and are used to, central air conditioning and heating. However for those of you who live in places that have neither (California) or places that just have heating (Sweden) you will understand perfectly.

My husband sent me this picture via email not too long ago with a subject line, "Relate to this?" Well, besides the fact that the poor girl could be me, with her horn-rimmed glasses and dark hair, I could in fact relate quite well. Though I generally tend to get too warm when I'm sleeping, even in the winter. I may need to pitch a tent and start sleeping out on the balcony.

About a week or so ago it started getting colder so we pulled out our winter blanket and exchanged our summer one for it. I found myself actually feeling cold while I was sleeping at night and snuggling up under the covers felt wonderful. The winter picture above definitely applied to me. Only add a man and cat taking up most of the bed and it would be a perfect picture of our sleep sanctuary. Then my husband went to the hardware store. Do you know what this means? It means that those lovely cool, verging on cold, nights were over.

At the hardware store he bought a little key that would allow him to let the air out of our radiators. Apparently due to some renovations being done one our building, air had been trapped in the radiator lines and the hot water couldn't flow through and therefore heat our apartment, hence the nice "cool" sleeping conditions. That snuggly cozy winter blanket that I slept under, all cuddled up to my husband, started to feel like it was suffocating me. My sleep position began to more so resemble the summer night photo above.

Well, it isn't all bad news. The good news is that, with the wonderfully insulated double-pained windows we have, our apartment feels cozy and warm. Almost tropically warm. So what if I wake up in the middle of the night and have to throw a leg outside the covers to regulate my body temperature, right? I'll just sneak around the house and turn down all of the radiator thermostats so we can have more cuddling.