So, when is winter over…
I have about two feet of snow around the house. Even under the cedars, it’s over a foot deep. I shoveled the walk last night and woke up to another 2-3 inches. I did not shovel today. It got up to 20°F today, and there was a bit of sun — for about forty minutes. But now it’s cloudy again and the temperatures are plummeting, heading down to a low of 4°F tonight — though it will probably be colder. Also, the city seems to think there is more snow on the way tonight because there is a street parking ban so that the plow guys can do their jobs in the wee hours.
I knew La Niña and a wobbly polar vortex were likely to make for a very cold Midwinter, but I didn’t think there would be this much precipitation. I guess this is what we get from a warmer atmosphere. Warmer means the air holds more moisture, and when it mixes with the cold northern air, it all falls… Apparently on Vermont. But the snow, as draining as it is, isn’t half as bad as the cold…
I got my electric bill last Friday. I’d been using the electric heater to keep one room warm enough to sit and write, trying to save the oil cost of heating an entirehouse. That sort of backfired. The combination of slightly higher electric rates and much higher usage added over 25% onto the bill.
Green Mountain Power very helpfully prints a summary of use for the billing cycle, confirming that, yes, this year I have used more electricity than last December. But they also record the average temperature alongside those usage numbers. Last year, this billing cycle averaged 36°F, which is about normal for this time of year. But this year, Green Mountain Power says our average temperature is 21°… and I think that might be high… When I saw their figures, I went combing through my weather journal. I didn’t do the math, but it looks to me like the average is probably closer to 10°. We’ve had several days where the mercury never climbed above 0°F, and most of the recorded highs are in the upper teens. Also… we don’t spend much time with those high temperatures. It hits that high at around noon and then starts cooling off again as the sun is westering by 2pm. But the lows… those last for most of the very long night.
So it’s not just that I’ve been using the electric heater and have holiday lights (which I had last year also…), it’s that this is a much colder end of the year. I’m sort of frightened about the second half of winter. Maybe this is as cold as it will get and maybe there won’t be too much more snow… but that seems unlikely as our winter weather usually doesn’t get severe until well after the solstice. But if it gets too much colder, which is not unlikely, I’m going to need to start running the kitchen faucet at a drizzle all night to keep the pipes from freezing. And the electric heater is going to be necessary, not just a matter of comfort. The next bills for oil and electricity and water are probably going to be stroke inducing…
But that is everything these days. There are daily dour reports on the lack of consumer spending this holiday season and the fear we all share of not being able to pay bills come January. I spent nearly $300 at the co-op for two weeks of groceries… It didn’t even fill a cart. It was not long ago that $300 was a very rare grocery bill, usually involving a holiday meal for the extended family. Now, it’s normal. Yet my paycheck has not skyrocketed to keep pace with these costs. In fact, there are rumors that there will be no raises this year — because, unsurprisingly, we’re not doing great. In fact, budget cuts are so deep, most of the branches and departments have taken to printing holiday cards on the copier rather than buying them. Which is cute and very Vermont… but a little scary when you think about it… (Especially in my position where I get a front row seat on the shit-show that is commercial lending in northern Vermont right now…)
But it’s not just Vermont. Those dour news reports on holiday spending are national. And… I was down in Brooklyn last weekend, the first weekend in December, what should have been coming up on peak holiday shopping. And yet it wasn’t… The subways and sidewalks were not packed. Cafés and diners were empty. Shops were no more busy than usual. Maybe even less than when I was down there in September. We even went over to Manhattan to my son’s former NYU stomping grounds and were able to get a lunch table at a normally packed Swedish bakery in Greenwich. The Village looked more like a Tuesday in February than the first Saturday in December. Maybe all the students were being unusually diligent and studying for finals. Maybe people were staying in and shopping online… Except…
Son#2 is moving. Finally getting out of that roach-infested armpit of an apartment that was all he could afford for many years. He found another rent-controlled building a half mile or so away with more living space and actual closets and nary a roach… (His cat will be sad… she considers them something akin to kitty popcorn…) But there was much walking back and forth between the two places, and after a while I started to notice something. There was much less festivity that is usual for Brooklyn.
New Yorkers do holiday décor. Even in Jewish Brooklyn, there are lights and greens. And all the shops seem to be competing on holiday window displays. But not this year. Maybe one in five windows have lights or window paint. Very few have greenery. Well, I can understand that! I wanted to hang garland on the fence, but it was $50 for 10 feet at Agway, one of the cheapest places to buy that sort of thing… And that’s in Vermont, where we are surrounded by evergreens. I can only imagine what the New York price is. In any case, it didn’t appear that New Yorkers were paying it. Even over in hoighty-toighty Park Slope, where the sidewalks are so clean you could eat off them (ok, not really, but you get the idea), there were maybe three buildings that had any garland. In fact, that was what got me paying attention.
We went over there for dinner on Friday. Normally, that neighborhood is awash in festivity by Thanksgiving with lavash garlands, enormous wreaths, and oh-so-tasteful lights twinkling in every window. But this year, we were almost to the diner before I saw anything like the usual displays. One 10-15 foot stretch of fence was garlanded with this opulent confection of glitter and evergreen — and I realized that that was all I had seen.
So then I started looking… And I think that one garland in Park Slope was the only bit of opulence I saw all weekend. Most places had nothing, and the few that bothered to decorate didn’t seem to have their heart in it. Nothing amazing but that one garland. The lack of shop window displays, the dearth of lights on homes and apartments, the empty sidewalks and subways with plenty of open seating, the subdued shopping and quiet restaurants… all this in New York City, the epicenter of consumerism… the weekend down there really brought home how bad this economy is right now.
I’ve been looking here at home also. Homes that were lit up last year are generally not this year. The house down the road that normally goes nuts with blow-ups and gizmos has a few lights up… and that’s it. On my street, there are a few people with holiday trees in the windows, but nobody has put lights outside. This is compared to the last many years where my house was one of maybe two that did not have lights draped around the porch posts and shrubs. Yes, the weather has been ferocious and nobody wants to be hanging lights in that mess, but I think it’s more than the weather.
It’s worrying about the electric bill with all those lights on. It’s having a light strand die and not wanting to spend money to replace it. A lot of money… It’s maybe even a bit of disengagement with this holiday season. Why bother making a fuss over it… Can’t afford even that special holiday meal for the extended family. And if you have kids… best tone down the festivity… don’t want to get Christmas hopes too high…
And under all that there is the fear that January is going to be worse in every way… what with weather and Big Ugly Bills and so on… And then, what if AI comes for your job…
So…
Things are a bit concerning out there in the world. I wish I could hide… Or maybe hibernate.
Wake me when it’s 40°F…
So, I did what I always do when I’m fretting… spent most of the day in the kitchen. This not only kept me warm, but now I have all the food I need for the week. There’s a loaf of raisin and sage whole wheat bread. I made yogurt and a big pot of posole. And I’m trying a recommendation on beans and old digestive tracts. I read somewhere that if you are having increasing problems with beans as you age, an extra long soaking might make them digestible again. So I simmered chick peas all day and then put them in a bowl of fresh water in the fridge to let them soak more. I figure I’ll give it two days of soaking and then make hummus. I really hope that works because I miss hummus!
I’m still worried… obviously… But the work took me away from the fear. And now there’s yummy food to eat… Makes everything better.
©Elizabeth Anker 2025
By My Solitary Hearth 