Maybe Forget the Boiling Water

 It's been unseasonably warm here for weeks. For most of the past week, it's been very still--no wind at all. There's been a lot of fog, so the air felt heavy, damp, stuffy, and not at all autumnal. This meant several nights of not sleeping well, so as the week went on, I was feeling more tired and sluggish, both mentally and physically. Last night, it all caught up to me and after supper I was feeling like I just couldn't do anything. I couldn't fall asleep, either. I really don't like it when those two things combine. So I got myself into my bed early and sat there in the dark listening to podcasts, booktube, and part of an audiobook. By the time I was listening to the latter, it was around midnight and I had situated myself to be ready for sleep. An hour later, I turned off my mp3 player, turned over, and fell asleep, a little earlier than usual, but that's OK. There was a breeze and it was cooler, so I was able to sleep to a time that is reasonable for me. I'm feeling better today. 

I expect things to become even more conducive to sleep as an 'Arctic maritime regime' settles over us and brings wintry weather, although this will not be good for going from place to place. It's supposed to be cold for a week, with various episodes of frozen precipitation. That means ice will coat sidewalks and roads. They will send gritters out on the roads, but no one will do anything about the sidewalks. Those will just get worse each day until it's warm enough to cause melting and evaporation. People here will say that they're not used to the ice and that's why they don't deal with it well, but let's be real. Most winters there are at least a few days where ice is a problem. It's not hard to figure out how to deal with it. I would have thought that businesses and homeowners would want to avoid possible legal liability for any falls on the sidewalks in front of their premises, so, out of curiosity, I looked it up. Turns out that if the ice occurs naturally--as a result of freezing rain, for instance--no one is responsible for any injury resulting from it. However, if the owner does something to melt the ice and it then refreezes, like pouring boiling water onto a sidewalk to melt the ice, then that is not naturally occurring ice and the owner bears responsibility. So they have an incentive to just leave the ice there. This seems kind of weird, as does the boiling water example, which I found on a law firm's website. Then again, they seem to be fond of boiling water as a remedy. The first winter we were in the country, we heard a reminder on the radio that it wasn't a good idea to throw boiling water on your windshield to get any frost or ice off it. We laughed and wondered aloud who would do that, even as we assumed plenty of people do, or they wouldn't have said anything. A short time later, we were looking out the window and saw our neighbor toss some hot water on her windshield. We had another laugh.

In any case, we'll see what Monday is like. Hopefully, we'll be able to do a couple of errands in town before the ice arrives (if it does--plenty of time for the forecast to change). After those are done, I am happily anticipating a cozy stretch of hibernation with plenty of time to read, sip hot beverages, and sleep, sleep, sleep! I rely on this time to catch up on the sleep that is so elusive during the summer months and because of the weird weather, I am 6 weeks behind on that already. It's nice to wake up feeling rested. I look forward to it.

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