ZAP!

It must be the consistently San Francisco-style chill of outside temps this week. For what follows is yet another post on What Once Was + What I Find Comforting.

Last week, I waxed poetic on butter: comfort food. Today it's electricity: comfort? Well, yes, when it's zapping through a soft blankie.

An ELECTRIC blanket - which somehow somewhere along the way got morphed into the gentler automatic blanket.

Over time (and a more sophisticated/sensitive consumer base?), I suppose marketing departments of electric blankets figured that alluding to all that electrical current pulsing through fabric intended as bedding was not altogether the most attractive way to sell the beast. Shades of fire-in-the-hole.

Anyways.
ELECTRIC <<>> Automatic. Same difference.
It's still about coils of wire running through layers of soft material, with a control to set the high-low intensity of heat.
It's still about WARM.

End of last year, when temps began to drop into true winter digits (for California), I began to obsess on getting and staying toasty this season without needing to resort to pushing up the thermostat (consequently, the propane bill).

Checking out store / online sales, I wisely made purchases of a down bathrobe, fleece lined slippers, as well as a down vest (yes, to wear indoors!). Finally, I succumbed to something that did not require one's own body temp to warm up the material first before basking in the comfort of a maintained heat.

Yup.
Aforementioned automatic blanket. This baby promised insta-warmth at the touch of a button. I didn't get it for the bed. Rather, I picked out a twin-sized one with the intention of using it for cozy days and nights on the couch. Reading, knitting and whiling away many a chilly hour as a Winter Couch Spud was the extent of my seasonal goals. Admittedly, once it gets cold, I am reduced to life's less productive, decidedly slothier, pursuits.

Before the purchase of this automatic blankie, the first and only time I'd ever used one was as a young teen. The family-of-origin's San Francisco flat didn't have a reliable heat source, save for a big roaring portable gas furnace which Dad rigged up in the middle of the hallway. That sucker fairly blazed. Even so, because of the length of the flat, the bedrooms remained cold. Truth be known, this gas heater only warmed the immediate space in front of it.

After suffering through one too many consistently cold nights (or was it the whining of the kids?), Mom and Dad finally got the family a couple of ELECTRIC blankets. If memory serves me, we rotated using two blankets - I seem to remember a pale blue one with dual controls...

...at any rate, when it got to be my turn, with a bit of electricity humming through my covers, I discovered the delight of actually sleeping warm for some nights during those cold winter months. What a concept!

Cheap thrills!
For one who grew up in old, unheated San Francisco housing - a real treat may be something that others take for granted - like being warm. This may also explain why camping never really appealed to me. As a kid, I often wore extra sweaters, even a jacket to bed. Why would anyone in their right mind purposely go out and sleep on the hard ground or out in the open air cold when a soft comfortable bed and heated room INDOORS is an option?!?

While we're commiserating, ditto for dining alfresco, unless the outside temp is perfect and there is absolutely no breeze to speak of. When you can dine away from the elements, why take your food to eat outside in the chill and wind, all the while attracting bugs to share your meal?!?

Big city gal talking here. Big city gal who too often slept in a frigidly cold room. Big city gal who does not like her meal to get chilled or blown about by the infamous San Francisco wind. Big city gal who does not enjoy bugs going after her food.

Oh.
Note that I have digressed. And how. Too much information?
Well then.
Back to the topic at hand...

Fondest memory of that first ELECTRIC blanket: without fail, if I fell asleep with the setting at #4, I would dream of the Beatles.

No kidding.