For a long time, I didn't have a winter coat. I thought I had a winter coat, but that is because I grew up in Arkansas. And what is a heavy winter coat in the South is merely a light jacket in the North. I discovered this, to my chagrin, in the midst of the very first ever blizzard of my life when I sallied excitedly forth to get donuts and ended up, shivering and breathless and stunned, taking shelter in a subway station beneath the streets of Boston. I was so traumatized by my newfound knowledge that I immediately bought a very long, very puffy down coat in a lovely shade of plum and spent the rest of that winter dressed as an ambulatory purple mattress.

I mention this because after eight years of living in temperate North Carolina and forgetting my hard-won New England lessons, I moved with my little baby to the Colorado Rocky Mountains high and promptly almost froze us both to death. 

Fortunately, my friend Andrea came over to the house, saw what I thought was a winter comforter on the bed where I was huddling with my infant on icy December nights, and immediately went back to her house around the corner and returned with a heavy, thick, real winter comforter that made all the difference in the world. I still have it here.

I also have a million (rough estimate) other blankets, quilts, comforters, afghans, and throws that I have hoarded up with great diligence for 26 years now. In my defense, we did lose power for several hours once about 20 years ago, so all of this is very reasonable.

Today I made two enormous lawn-and-leaf bags -- one for the ARC and one for the animal shelter -- filled with extraneous warm bed coverings to give away.

It's a little embarrassing to discover that I had so many. It's also a little embarrassing to admit how many I still have left. But although colloquial expression has it that Hell is burning hot, Southerners and readers of Dante know that, in actual fact, Hell is freezing cold. The prudent among us, aware of the states of our own souls, prepare accordingly.