Is cold fueling my cold?

So I've had this cold/flu thing for two weeks. It's not actually bad. I don't even have a fever. But it's the kind of thing that keeps you up all night coughing (and I do mean YOU, if you're anywhere near me, though to be fair there aren't that many YOUs sleeping in my house, and anyway, my main concern is ME) and keeps me tired and sluggish all day. And then there's the throat-on-fire thing. A few recent days have passed where I've gotten nothing done at all, save the bare essentials. (The bare essentials consisting mainly of feeding the dogs and letting them into the yard to potty. Because cleaning up dog pee inside is a worse thing than dragging my sluggish ass out of bed to open the back door for them.)

And so while lying in bed, waiting for the Tivo to fast forward between episodes of Law & Order, I have time to look around and think. And right now I'm thinking: should I close my windows? We've been having an unbearably gorgeous summer here in Chicago ... except for the humidity, that is ... but the temperature has been wonderful. Wonderful in that it's 80-90 degrees during the day, as a proper summer should be, but 60-70 at night. Nowhere near hot enough to cause the house to overheat. So at home, the practice is: open the windows at night, close them (and the window shades) during the day, if it's hot. You barely even need to turn on the A/C ... if it weren't for the humidity. And lately, the days have been drier and no A/C has been required at all during the day.

So, for the past couple weeks, my windows have been open all day and all night. It's constantly breezy, and at night, that breeze is blowing in air that gets down to the low 60s. Every now and then, an upper 50. Which has made me wonder: might I not be as sick if I'd just close my windows and keep the temperature constant in here?

I've long screamed from the rooftops that you don't catch a cold from being cold. But you have to admit that there is something about temperature change, about cold breezes, about breathing cold air at night. It gives you the sniffles.

But all winter long I yearn for the days when I can open up the house. When I can leave the big, heavy doors ajar and have nothing but screens between myself and the outdoors. So I hate to miss even a day of that.

Right now it's 75 in my bedroom, and 66 outside. It's 9:30 p.m. It's time for my slug of a body to get some rest. It's still cooling down outside. Inside, the heat from the lights and the computer will soon be gone. I eye the window much like, on any normal day, I'd eye the Stairmaster. Knowing that there is something I should get up and do. But tonight I don't resist a workout; I resist closing that window.