I’ve gone subterranean.

The thermometer has barely registered above zero all week, and I’ve decided the basement is the safest, and warmest, place to be.

The move was made all the more crucial by an aging furnace that struggles to keep up with a normal Iowa winter. There didn’t seem to be a need to tax it further. I’m hoping it will be appreciative of the reduced workload from the lower thermostat setting and keep doing its best for another year or so.

I am lucky I have a finished basement where I can retreat. It’s a typical basement, with furnishings no longer upstairs-worthy and decorated with mementos that don’t seem to fit anywhere else in the house. There’s a great deal of sentiment, if not style, in that downstairs family room.

It does possess the basic amenities – a television, CD player, bathroom, and plenty of books. There’s even a gas fireplace to keep me warm.

What it didn’t have the beginning of the week it has now. Bit by bit, day by day, I have moved the upstairs down.

The laptop came first, of course. Work doesn’t stop. Work also requires the cell phone. And the handheld version of the house phone. By Day 3 I had grown tired of carrying the cluster of handhelds up and down and moved the chargers downstairs as well. I’m considering hooking up the printer.

There’s a kitchen stove in the basement. It didn’t take long before pots and pans on site made more sense than carrying food up and down. It’s probably a good thing the refrigerator died a few years ago.

A bottle of wine made it’s way down the first of the week. A bottle of Templeton on Thursday. There’s more than one way to beat the Iowa cold.

My daily list notebooks are there now, of course. As are a variety of writing utensils. Chap stick. Nail clippers. Hand lotion. Slippers. One can’t be without those for long, can they? And magazines and catalogues.

There are now two sweaters hanging on the exercise bike. The week’s cache of newspapers graces the corner. A pile of daily mail holds court on the coffee table.

The garbage can is full for the first time in the nine years I’ve lived here.

The stack of CDs grows taller every day. Just because I’m confined to a single space doesn’t mean I can’t still have listening variety.

And no evening in a recliner is complete without my trusty Pocahontas blanket.

They say it’s going to warm up next week – a welcome change. It will be good to once again see the light of day.

It’s too bad I will have to take a day off and hire a moving crew to re-enter the world above ground.