It's cold. It's insanely cold. The thermometer hasn't wanted to inch above zero, and we're not even going to get into the damned wind chill values or "real feel" temperatures. (Of course we are. Twenty to thirty below zero at times.)
It's been a week straight of this crap and we're all tired of it. From the Midwest to the Great Lakes region to Mainada. (That's Maine+Canada, because I have my suspicions that Maine was just sort of absorbed by Canada years ago.) And southerners wonder why we northerners are such a grumpy bunch?
So I'm not heading into 2018 with a song in my heart, exactly. There's talk of a major nor'easter ramping up to slam us on Thursday, which makes my head hurt. I'm a chronic worrier, and I'm about exhausted from worrying about my mules (I don't have a big, fancy barn I can close them in and sleep easy, just a very small run in shed and whispered promises to the universe that I'll be a better person if only my animals make it through this one winter unscathed and relatively well thawed). I've worried about my water pipes for the first time in the five years I've lived in this house. I worry that my old cat will freeze to death in the yard before she'll be able to make up her fucking mind where she's going to take a crap. I've worried that my car tires will explode. Seriously. I don't even know where that one comes from, but it crosses my mind every damned winter.
So if you see me out chiseling frozen mule turds out of the paddock tundra, cursing loudly and threatening to move somewhere where forty degrees above zero is considered brutally cold, don't stop. Don't say hello, don't ask how I'm doing. I'm more likely to snap a tine off my manure fork and drive it through your eye as to say hello. Talk to me in May, when I'm waddling around the yard squealing with excitement over every bit of green poking up through the soil.
The cats are entering burrito mode, a reminder that it's time to load the wood stove...again.
Happy New Year.
