It’s a good day to stay inside and warm

Today is one of those days when I am eternally grateful that I don’t have an outside job. The temperatures are in the single digits and my tea gets cold in a heartbeat.

There have been many times in my life when I had to go outdoors and do what needed to be done no matter what the thermometer said.

Growing up, there were animals to be fed and watered. On really cold days we penned them up in the barn. They didn’t seem to care for it.

One year our neighbors gave us a couple of lambs.

We named them Wooly and Nellybelle. They were runts and had been born too early in the year. They were not expected to survive the winter. We kept them in the kitchen and fed them bottle after bottle of lamb formula from a Pepsi bottle outfitted with a long black nipple. Once the weather warmed up they graduated to one of the horse stalls and finally to one of the little fields that had been fenced off for the chickens and ducks.

They had access to the chicken coop if they wanted shelter. They rarely took advantage of that.

After I grew up I had a series of jobs. Some I liked a lot, a couple of them gave me friends that I still communicate with, and then there were others where it took everything I had to get through the day. Not a single one allowed me to stay home because of the weather.

This always puzzled my mom. I can’t count all the times she would tell me to stay home because the weather forecasters predicted nasty weather of some sort. This backfired a couple of times when I really should have stayed home because of the weather.

I am always surprised when the forecasters get it right. With all their charts, all kinds of information at their fingertips and everything else it takes to come up with a forecast, it seems that the final result is little more than an educated guess.

Even though I don’t have to go outside today, writing these words is not without its own set of challenges.

There is the ever popular, “I have nothing to say,” excuse. Sometimes the computer decides what I have typed should be hidden where I will never find it. I am firmly convinced that all our modern technology is out to get us. No, I’m not paranoid but one can never be too sure about things.

Plus Gracie the cat seems to be doing her laps across my keyboard.

Sometimes this results in a screen that I’ve never seen before, and always results in a flurry of cat hair floating all over the place.

Gracie is getting old. At 17 she is finding it increasingly difficult to judge her leaps from one place to another.

She has missed the couch more than once. For an animal that hates to be picked up, she now allows me to lift her onto the couch without that pitiful meow I usually hear when I pick her up.

Even though our house is much warmer than the one where I grew up, I surround myself with blankets and pillows and am still chilly. I consider anything less than 75 degrees or so to be colder than I like. At least the cold won’t last forever.

I have worked my share of holidays, snow days, foggy days, exceptionally cold or hot days and don’t have any desire to do it again.

All the people who go outdoors every workday have my thanks and sympathy. Be safe, be careful and stay warm no matter what your day holds.



Even though our house is much warmer than the one where I grew up, I surround myself with blankets and pillows and am still chilly. I consider anything less than 75 degrees or so to be colder than I like. At least the cold won’t last forever.



I have worked my share of holidays, snow days, foggy days, exceptionally cold or hot days and don’t have any desire to do it again. All the people who go outdoors every workday have my thanks and sympathy. Be safe, be careful and stay warm no matter what your day holds.