A hard freeze.

The weather gods have no mercy. Not for Texas, and not for the rest of the country whose temperatures are much lower than ours, with snow and sleet and ice tossed in for the heck of it.

The television weather wizards predicted yesterday that we would have a "hard freeze." (Is there a soft freeze? And couldn't we have had that instead?)

We now know what a hard freeze means: if you don't wrap the outside water pipes to within a millimeter of their plastic lives, they will crack during the night as the temperature goes below freezing. As a result, when you wake up in the morning, the low water pressure coming through the inside faucets will slowly trickle down to just a few drops, which will make you put on hats and coats and gloves and go outside to check the outside filter boxes and water pipes.... which will then send you back into the house using language that your mother may not approve of...... which will have you calling a "master plumber" (translation: $95 per hour) to come and replace the frozen and cracked water pipes and filter boxes that magically transport the water from the underground well to the kitchen faucet which fills up the teapot.

Did you get all of that? It would pain me greatly to have to repeat it. But that's what has happened. A hard freeze. A hard freaking freeze. Right here in the Hill Country, whose winters are known to be mild (60 - 72 degrees), whose cold snaps come along infrequently with temperatures hovering around 49 degrees and even then, we think we're freezing to death as soon as we step out on the porch. Well, think again.

This winter is reminding me of our friends C and R, who moved to upstate NY last year. Those two take outdoor vacations that keep them on the edge of sanity-- hiking (in woods with bears), white-water rafting (complete with waterfalls), canoe-ing (without a map), and camping (with tents). Their ideal vacation is one where they can come back to town and tell their friends: "We had a great trip! We almost died!" (Translation: they saw a bear, their raft over-turned, they got lost in a swamp with their canoe, a snake found its way into their tent.)

I'm waiting for C and R to call and ask us how our first winter is going in our new country home in the hills. My answer: "It's been great! I learned how to kill scorpions and not scream and cry as I smash them with my shoe. I've been cleaning a chicken coop every morning when the sun comes up and making sure the lower-than-normal temperature hasn't frozen their drinking water. We had a hard freeze here and the outside water pipes and filter boxes weren't wrapped tightly enough so we woke up without running water to make tea and hot oatmeal. My husband had to take buckets of water from the outside fountain to fill up the 6 toilet tanks in the house so we can flush them.... and the only reason the fountain water didn't freeze up in this godforsaken weather is because the bottom basin is three feet deep and I know that for sure because one of our chickens walked into it two months ago and drowned. And we lost three other chickens to either hawks or coyotes and they all died!"

Enough sarcasm. On Monday morning, the so-called master plumber with ten years experience will be here to replace all the frozen and cracked water pipes. I'm going to tell him to insulate those pipes to within a millimeter of their ever-dripping plastic lives..... so if we get another cold blast from the north next year, those pipes will be sweating and begging for mercy from the Powers That Be in the outdoor plumbing world.