North Dakota cold

I’m doing my blog post early this week because, frankly, I haven’t much else to do. The College has been closed for two days because of cold weather. And it is cold, I’ll give you that. Since last week, the usual social pleasantries of “good morning,” “hello,” and “goodbye” have been replaced one and all with “Stay warm.” The weather station in the kitchen just gave up and displayed OFL, for “off line”, I presume, although if you try pronouncing it, it comes out “awful”, which is also true. Awful damned cold. The one in the bedroom said -29.2°F when we got up today.

The weather station this morning

Hilda’s thermometer got as low as -33°. Nevertheless, I keep thinking back to the year I spent in North Dakota where it was -40° with wind chills of -90° every day for the first two weeks of February. Did the schools close then? They did not. Did I ever get a day off? Nope. We bundled up and went about our business—as quickly as possible.

I guess folks around here just aren’t used to it, and everything grinds to a frozen standstill. At least the wind has calmed down today. Tuesday night, it howled all night long. Hilda’s bed is beneath a window, and she had to wear her winter hat to bed because her head was so cold. And that’s saying something because she doesn’t get cold easily.

Yesterday we stayed at home. I did some research on Bianca’s condition and decided it could be wry neck, which is basically the same nutrient deficiency as star-gazing. And could we find where we put the selenium pills? Not a chance. Rather than going out, I looked up foods high in selenium and came up with sunflower seeds. I had some of those in my freezer. I mixed them with flax meal (for thiamine) and yogurt (for probiotics), and Hilda and I took it out to the coop. We were pleased that Bianca ate it eagerly. We left her alone with it on the storage side of the coop. Hilda went out an hour later and gave her water, which she drank. Today she seems a little better.

One of the pet-care responsibilities that I take very seriously is making sure Skippy gets an adequate amount of lap time. I feel bad that he has to stay in the cage when I am at work or doing things at home that I don’t need his help with (e.g., cooking or using my laptop). Still, I remind myself that he is out more than he would be if he were at a kennel. Anyway, I had the opportunity to give him some time yesterday afternoon while I caught up on Hobby Farms. He hopped on my lap, settled in, and began snoring softly. This was about 2:00.

An invitation to nap

The peer pressure was terrible. Warm cat on lap....so….sleepy….. And then it was 4:00. I feared I would be up all night, but I slept pretty well. Perhaps the cold wears me out.

This morning I tried some of things I saw on Facebook. I had heard about throwing boiling water into the air when I lived in North Dakota but was damned if I was going to go outside to do something so frivolous. I tried it this morning. The only thing I gained from the personal experience that I could not get from the videos was the faint crackling noise as the steam turned to frost.

I tried bubbles too. That was interesting but not spectacular. Rather than popping, they got sort of dented. I was most impressed by how they rolled around on the snow, sometimes for quite a distance. This is the best picture I could get.

Soap bubbles on the snow

We ventured out this morning when the temperature was a balmy -14°F. Hilda had to pick up a total of six prescriptions at Walgreens. I remembered correctly that Walgreens did not carry selenium supplements but WalMart did. Hilda waited in the (still running) car while I ran into WalMart.

When I got back, Hilda remarked that when she went outside this morning, the cold had settled over her like a blanket. There’s just no escape when it is that much below zero. “I felt bad for you when you lived in North Dakota,” she said, “but I don’t think I felt bad enough.”