Cold Weather

I am in California. We get on a wet year about 10 inches of rain...in a year. We don't get that much cold weather. I have to tell you some funny things about people who are not used to cold. This morning it was 23 so you know it is very cold for us. At 23 things start to break. This morning, the garage door wouldn't open or close. We had to lift it like a normal garage door. Gosh, I feel like such a looser even writing this. I went out to water my chickens, and the brass thing that the hose hooks to had broken and the brass snapped clean off. The automatic sprinklers came on sometime during the night so the sidewalk was one giant sheet of ice. I was pouring hot water on the kids windshields so they could go on their journeys and it froze as fast as I poured. It makes me laugh at myself because I am so ill equipped for cold weather. I have to really think to problem solve. I go out and water my chickens last thing at night and give them cracked corn. The hose will be frozen until at least noon.

I just can't stay in the house. I have to walk around and look at the patterns the frost makes on the ground, and on the leaves that are on the ground and the frozen weeds wearing the light coating of ice. Even the trash cans will have frozen ice on top of them. I find myself laughing at how frozen the ground is and how different it is to me. I am enjoying it so much. I like how when I go outside the air is so fresh and cold. I was sitting in the sun the other day, and I watched as a whirl-wind came racing toward me with it's leaves and grass twisting into a small tornado. I had been sewing so I reached over to hold onto my pattern as the whirl wind reached me all of the leaves and grass just stopped and fell at my feet. My husband was on the tractor watching it as it was going across the pasture toward me and he thought it looked so cool to see the thing just stop right at my feet. I was glad he saw it because I don't think anyone would have believed it.

I am very happy to be having winter. Each day has within it a new experience. I am also very happy to be living in this house and not the one before this one. In our bedroom in the other house there was no heat. So every winter we froze to death. The house was built funny so that the heating never made it to our bedroom.
In the summer it was the opposite there was never any cold air from the air conditioner. I was thinking as I was listening to our heat come on and I thought,"Oh those poor people, I bet they are freezing to death with this cold." Unless they were smarter than us and bought a heating system that worked better than the one we had. Which might be the case.

It is bright and full of sun today. The sky is blue and I am so happy to be here right now.
Have a great week,
~Kim~