Bedtime. Brrrrrrrrr.

Strange night.

Mother Nature's taken another solid step into the rain, gloom and continual overcast characterizing the Pacific Northwest winter.

Think it was my body/psyche picking up on that that kept me awake. All. Night. Long.

From, oh, 2:30, 3 a.m. to 6:30, I lay awake. Not with that intense mental activity that produces insomnia (and with which I'm often familiar lately).

This was different. A floaty insomnia in the cold.

Correction: Because of the cold.

The environment in my studio's changing as the conditions outdoors shift. This is my first autumn/winter in it so I don't know what's in store.

In warmer conditions, it's comfortable, pleasant. I can open the old windows. Let the air carrying tiny bits of dirt from the ground directly outside in. I wondered why despite how meticulously clean I keep the place that it gets unusually dusty, I figured it out.

Beginning last night, really, there's a constant chill in the air. Due to the season. Due to location, studio deep into ground level.

The windows. These windows are 96 years old. They're not sealed even when they're closed and latched. The panes are thin and the drafts palpable and detectable to skin and ear.

I've stuffed rags up along the edges -- an attractive look. That 3M stick-on insulation film, which I used with mucho success in an old Idaho house abundant with picture windows and effectively no heat, thus a kerosene heater, would help. It's just so expensive on unemployment.

Also there'll be no using the (electric baseboard) heat, no thank you to that monetary shock.

Now I'm getting sick, brought on my the chill in the studio. This is a warning sign I heed seriously because of a long history with respiratory ailments and illnesses; the entire system is weak and vulnerable, in particular the lungs. I know this and learned it well through hard experience, thus I do not treat the matter lightly and know not to push the envelope, as I'm wont to do with health, otherwise I end up useless to myself and to others.

So. That's my current dilemma. How to winterize the old drafty studio on a pittance. I'll figure it out, I always do.

It's one more reason to have a job, a setting that hopefully, ideally, is warm.