Cold snap

It's been a mournful cold here. A gruesome cold. The cold is an entity, and it hunts you down, snags you at the knees. Touching metal, like doorknobs or the car handle is like touching fire. In town, the ice fog is as thick as pea soup, turning everything reddish gray. Lights are distorted, cars seem further away then they are in reality. I saw -62 at Fred's on Saturday, and it was -58 on our west thermometer. The house collapses in on itself, walls withdrawing into their centers, their ends shrinking from each other. The result: drafts. Cruel, unseen shards of coldness sneaking across the floors to meet each other and create rivers of chill across our ankles. At one point, the warmest part of our house--the heater--was only 51. Of course, that's 51 ABOVE zero, so life is good. Well, life is tolerable. I went to the store to buy down quilts and comforters for our household, and ran into friends who crowed about their warm house. Kayt and I swore a solemn oath to each other that this spring we will complete the weatherization on our house. This time we mean it. Seriously. Really, we do. No kidding. Meanwhile, we are making do with blankets covering the windows, duct tape and foam on the leaky door, and quilts. Lots and lots of quilts.