Birmingham, AL: An Annoyance of Facts

 

Room temperature, Birmingham, Alabama. January 2021.

 

In my apartment, I have been confronted by an annoyance of facts. 

An annoyance of facts. Like a conspiracy of lemurs. A crash of rhinoceroses. A murder of crows. A deceit of lapwings. A gang of turkeys. 

An annoyance of facts. The facts are the lighthouse and I am the ship, so I'm the one who has to move.

There is no central heat in my apartment. 

Instead, I have:

• A poorly-functioning window unit that purports to both cool and heat,
• An oil-filled portable heater, and
• A "ceramic element" heat fan. 
• A whopping first-electric-bill-of-the-winter.
  

Furthermore, wind billows through and around the window unit. 

The front door has a gap in the upper left corner that perfectly aligns with the gap in the upper left corner of the storm door. Long fingers of cold air swoosh through between the door and its frame. The windows are single-pane relics of the 1950s held in place with leaky metal frames.

So when winter hit, I felt fucking cold. And coldly resentful. 

I  knew from experience regarding my apartment's malfunctioning refrigerator and malfunctioning stove (since addressed), that the landlord would question my definition of cold, so I bought two small room thermometers. 

Well, fuck all. 

 I discovered that the low temperatures were in the upper 60s at 8:42 in the morning (after three hours of electric heat when I arose for the day), with a low of 65 during the previous night. 

On one hand, this annoyed the hell out of me because, absent any objective data, I had felt very, very cold, and it just didn't seem possible that this could be the accurate temperature. 

But now that I had temp facts, I still felt cold, but less so.

How annoying.

Room temperature, Birmingham, Alabama. January 2021.