Friday, November 30, 2007

A Sauna for Sarah

I don't know if I've mentioned it on my blog, but I have a bizarre personal thermostat. I am almost always cold. Since I was a kid I can remember my parents urging me, "Take off your sweatshirt! It's perfectly warm inside!" I even wear sweaters in the summer when indoors, which everyone finds very odd. Air conditioned rooms are just too chilly for me. My hands are almost always cold. "Get up and move around," people tell me. "Get some exercise; then you'll be warmer." So I run a few miles each day, or go to the gym and do 45 minutes of cardio and some lifting with free weights. By the time I get home, I'm cold again.

Over the summer I bought a digital thermometer and started taking my temperature regularly. I discovered that usually, even in the middle of the day when I'm up and about and doing things around the house, my temperature is around 95 or 96. I felt so validated... I really AM cold! It's not in my head! Oddly enough, my waking temperature is the highest one, which apparently isn't normal. It's probably because I'm able to get warm at night under plenty of blankets.

A few weeks ago I stepped into the dry sauna in the gym locker room for the first time. I almost never go in the locker room since I can just come home to shower after a workout, so I didn't even know about the sauna.

I loved that sauna. It was like, for the first time, someone understood my personal temperature needs and met them perfectly. I was WARM. I could take off my fleece sweatshirt! It was blissful, heavenly warmth.

I wonder if FavoriteBoy can construct a personal sauna for me in our apartment?

1 comment:

  1. Funny--I'm the same way, though not inherited from ancestors we share. I find feeling cold the norm--during the rare moments I am completely warm I feel sick, and just want my hands to get cold again. My husband calls it "backwards thermostat." ~Allegra

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