I hate cold weather. There is a reason Dante put ice in the inmost circle of hell. When this blog froze—literally froze—last month, I felt pretty miserable, and very cold.

(My younger brother felt perfectly fine. He’s impervious to cold. It’s like a superpower.)

Late in January, when my typewriter monkeys got out of prison (don’t ask) and returned to my apartment, the cold was insufferable. It was then I decided to give my readers a glimpse into the trials of a chilly blogger and his assistants. Thus my dad sketched the Typewriter Monkey Task Force at work, depicting my monkeys typing with aching fingers, tails kinked by cold, fur specked with frost, muffled in parkas and muttering bitterly.

(Yes, I tried turning up the heat in my apartment, but my building’s feeble furnace was no match for winter’s insidious chill. Warm clothes were all that stood between us and the cruel ferocity of winter weather.)

I had planned to share my dad’s full sketch, but there was… a problem. My typewriter monkeys—pyromaniacs, every last of them—decided the best way to keep warm was to start a fire in my living room.

Well, a huge patch of my carpet has gone up in smoke, and my typewriter monkeys are back in the clink for arson, and only fragments of my dad’s lovely picture remains. I have shared this single scrap, singed and brittle, in gratefulness toward my parents for supporting my blog and in bitterness toward the Typewriter Monkey Task Force for burning a hole in my carpet.

Ah, well. I hope my monkeys are warmer in prison than they were in my apartment. Now, if you will excuse me, I should probably seek treatment for frostbite and hypothermia. I hope you’re warm, dear reader, wherever you are!