Balmy

Positively balmy at -11 right now.  The high today was -6, it was -11 when I got up.  This is what we do for fun in Hawkeye winters, measure how cold it is every few hours. 

I went to the dump this morning, cleaned out the refrigerator and tossed a lot of stuff.  Old apples, old carrots, mystery stuff.  Now I have to wash the shelves, which are sticky from an exploding cider jug.

I've had an otherwise quiet day, hauling in firewood, dozing, pedaling and petting the dogs.  Oh, I took a shower and did some laundry to make sure the pipes hadn't frozen.  All is fine so far.  Predictions are for -20 or more tonight, with a wind chill so cold it can't even be measured.  I mean, really, they're predicting a wind chill of -50.  The coldest I remember living here is -40 and that only happened once.  We used to have -30 or -40 every once in a while but that sure doesn't happen any more.  You don't really expect your car to be happy when it's that cold.  When it gets to -20 I lose the programming on my car radio.  I always have a newish car so my cars will start (I hope) no matter how cold it gets.

Squeaky snow is what we have now--we all recognize that sound.  I didn't spend much time outside today but the tires sure make squeaks.  The dogs have been well behaved all day.  They took themselves for a walk but weren't gone long this morning.  Treasure doesn't like weather this cold (now it's -12) but Tess is oblivious.  Me?  I can be outside for a little while before I realize how miserable it really is. When we lived in Illinois it would be miserably cold with a biting wind.  I was a patrol girl in elementary school--we wore white belts, stood on corners and stopped traffic to help kids cross the street.  Each of us had an assigned corner and I shared mine with my good friend Kathy.  We had a lot of fun but took ourselves pretty seriously.  Back then girls wore skirts and snow pants in really cold weather.  When it was below zero we'd get hot chocolate delivered by room mothers.  Boy do I sound old.  Well, hell, I AM old.  But I was a proud patrol girl.