Cold Shock

My watch went off at 6:30am this morning and I toyed with the alarm to give myself another 15 minutes of respite before my blessed winter break ended. Ugh. Fifteen minutes can pass by all too soon in the flashes of REM-lidded sleep. My dreams fled as the bleary edges of reality set in. I needed a shower to wake up.

My feet slid across the carpet, licking the polyester edges and I gathered up a towel, soap and scrubber.

FOOSHHHH.
waaugh!!! frick, that's cold water. i would have sworn if i could, but the chill knocked the breath out of me. i slammed the water off and toyed with the knob some more. was there some sort of trick to this? at home, the solar water heater takes a while to heat up the pipes. i tested it again. ice cold.what was i doing here?!? i've got hot water at home. is it really worth trading in a 30-45 min drive to school everyday for this?!?

i felt unprepared to move out of my parents' home all of a sudden. perhaps after close to two decades in the place, i had grown accustomed to everything. i couldn't tolerate the changes. the reason i was tired in the first place was that i was tossing and turning all night in this new, empty cottage. this foreign place i staked a claim for as if it were my own.

with the water a bare trickle, i focused on the sensation. describing it.raw nerve endings tingling, sending salty electrical signals up my ALS. What does that stand for? Amyotrophic, Lateral Sclerosis aka Lou Gehrig's.... but that was a different ALS.
What? oh yes. anterolateral system.
erector pili muscles across the entire surface area of my body strain in unison to raise the hairs on my body.
my skin puckers and quivers from the cold shock of the water.
my body quakes violently to burn excess ATP, wasting energy to generate excess heat. it just makes me feel more like a fool.
the anterolateral system conveys signals of pain and temperature. sometimes it doesn't tell you which one.

as my medico-scientific perspective unfolded, the water grew more bearable. was it actually getting warmer? i couldn't tell... i already finished my shower.

maybe i could get used to living in a cottage as well, parents or not!