It Actually FEELS Like the First Day of Winter…

I am one of those people that count winter starting as soon as I start complaining that I’m cold.

Most of the time, that hits about…. oh… Halloween.

I don’t like to be cold.

I abhor being cold.

The boy?  Not a fan of being roasty toasty like I am, but he does like to make me happy.  And because I’m expensive, in that I have to be warm, the electric bill gets a little high when I set the thermostat to 78 (before he turns it down).

(Never mind that the light bill increased 70% due to his Christmas MoJo and him channeling Clark Griswold… he doesn’t mind paying for that…but I digress…)

But to make me happy, he goes and cuts wood, brings it back here, and fires up the woodstove.  It’s been running since the storm hit on Friday (actually a bit before that) but he makes sure that every one else is stripping clothes off because they are so hot the house is nice and toasty.

But today, while much of the area is still digging out and I find myself working from home, I also find myself cold.

I sent him a text this morning asking if I should tend to the fire.  I was hoping that it was still going but his response was, “you’ll have to start one and oh, yeah, by the way, all the wood is in the back of my truck.”

His truck?  Filled with wood.

The problem?

There’s also 17″ of snow on top of it.

I bet he thought I would just jack the thermostat up and roll with it, but I didn’t.  No siree bob.  I put on my gloves (ok so they aren’t my gloves.  I don’t have snow gloves… i don’t know who they belong to, but whoever wore them last did not put them by the woodstove to dry because they are still damp) and my boots and outside I went.

Do you know how effective it is to get snow out of the back of a truck and off of wood with a baseball bat?

Not very.  But the shovel was too big and it’s all I had to work with and I unloaded the back of his truck and put the wood in the stairwell and then I went down to start a fire.

And then I waited.

I am impatient, I’m pretty sure we’ve covered this before.  I wanted there to be immediate relief to my frozen bones.  But there wasn’t.  He told me it would take awhile.  But I just looked and the temperature has risen a degree!

Yay!!!

I did it!!!

And I’m sitting here watching training videos while I watch the kids out the window.  Samara walked out of here looking like Nanook of the North.  No joke, the child has 2 pairs of pants and long johns on, 5 shirts, 3 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of gloves, a coat and her boots.  But no hat.  She might mess up her hair.

I told her, after assisting with her wardrobe, that if she came in before the hour was up, I was NOT helping her derobe.

But today is the first official day of winter and winter it is.

For your viewing pleasure, allow me to share with you a few more pictures from our winter wonderland (which, due to the fact that it’s not supposed to get out of the 30s this week, should be here for Christmas…)

And just so you know?  The final tally here?  Seventeen inches.  And that’s as scientific as I can get it.  I measured in the same place everytime.

Right here.

And told every child age 5 to 34 that they were, under no uncertain terms, to knock the snow off the trash can.

Then I realized that we had to take the trash out, but the boy?  Insanely talented.

Threw several bags away without moving a flake from the top!

Ok, so I’ll shut up.

More pictures, I know….

Until next time…