Freeze this....

.... and everything is indeed frozen, including the fabric tents outside the chicken coop. We had light rain early this morning and just as it was getting light outside, the temperature dropped to below freezing and the fabric attached to the fence of the coop turned into a frozen swath of ice. Ditto for the rain that fell on the porch and the steps-- ice. Ice all over the porch. Icicles on the fountain.

We are still coping without running water in the house. My husband goes to the barn for buckets of water to use for the bathroom commodes. He says this has brought a whole new meaning to "The Bucket List." The plumber was set to come here the other day, but then both he and my husband checked the weather and saw that we would get another two days of below-freezing temperatures (today and tomorrow).... so now the pipe-fixing day is set for Friday. I will believe it when I see the plumber's truck in our driveway. No, scratch that. I will believe it when I can turn on a faucet and water comes out of it.

The wind has been fierce this morning... so terribly cold out there that I honestly don't know how the chickens can stand it. They are still laying eggs, still clucking around the yard and digging for bugs. When I went out there to check for eggs this morning, all five of them ran towards me. With my back hurting for the past week, the chickens haven't seen very much of me except early in the morning and then again when the sun goes down at lock-the-coop time. When I do go out there, I bring them a treat..... this morning, they got some chopped-up carrots, which they love. Yesterday, I diced up a banana for them. I think the chickens are getting bored with plain old white bread... when I toss that out to them, they look down at it, look up at me, then they'll eat it only after I've gone back inside. Picky, picky.

This is the second winter of frozen weather in this part of the state. We thought we would sail through January and February with our normal Spring-like temperatures, but the weather gods had other plans. Priority #1 for my husband and the handyman will be to build an insulated enclosure around the water-pump in the barn. Ditto for the water pipes underneath the house. The pipes that connect to the kitchen sink were insulated before they froze, but this month's winds were so heavy that it must have created way-below-zero temperatures underneath the house.

The weather has been so un-civilized. So un-Texas. I'm trying my best to keep everything in perspective, but I'm the first to admit that I've been cranky this past week. To paraphrase that proverb from a few weeks ago: Every frozen moment is a frozen miracle.