Stealing from the Sun

Every Winter I get reminded that Pennsylvania is a Northern climate. Although hardly as cold as Minnesota and all of those dark sides of the moon up yonder, it is generally  pretty cold from mid-November until late February. Just when we are ready to pack the bags and move to Florida, the weather turns nice and Spring warms our neglected souls.

Since I have baseboard heating in my townhouse, the least inexpensive method of heating a house outside of burning dollar bills in the furnace, I keep my house mostly unheated all winter besides my bed room which I keep toasty after I get home from work all night. The rest of the house is igloo cold. How cold? I can see my breath when I eat breakfast.

On the weekends, I crank up the space heater and watch to Kilowatts fly. I just can't be cold all of the time.    

My mom for the last decade or so sends all of us in the family citrus of our choosing. Her box of oranges typically arrive just as I am finishing off the tangerines that I buy from seniors' for the school fund raiser. I used to dread the onslaught of citrus. One year I tried to make juice and found it to be so laborious that I gave up.

Part of how I have reconciled myself to eating all of the tangerines and oranges is to recognize that I am going to get all sticky. I used to bewail the mess of it all. Now, I peel and eat the products over the sink and then wash up. Keep the process centralized and self-contained.

Since the weather in Pa. has been in the single digits for the last several days, I have contemplated the unusual experience of eating a tropical fruit in the dead of winter. I call it "Stealing from the Sun." How fortunate indeed are we to be eating something that doesn't even grow in Pennsylvania, add to that the fact that is is nearly zero outside.

God delights in giving good gifts. Imagine how amazed our ancestors would have been to eat an orange in winter. We have some much  that we take for granted and I surmise that most of us live better than 99% of the humans who have lived and died. But, we just don't understand because we are informed not by the generations that have come before us but our own limited experiences.

We are time-locked and we must count our blessings by first seeing them.