Snowflakes.....

We woke up yesterday to one-half inch of snow and temperatures just at the freezing mark. This is the second winter that we've seen snow up here, and only the second time that people up here have ever seen snow. Because the temperature didn't get much above 39 degrees yesterday, most of the snow is still here. Today's high temperature should be around 50, so everything should be melted by this afternoon. And tomorrow, the Weather Wizards are promising 60 degrees-- a heat wave indeed.

Today is the day that my husband and our neighbor J will fix the handle of the water pump/pressure tank, or whatever that thing is in the barn that makes the water come up from the well and flow through the pipes and into the house. Real running water.... can it be true? We have been going to neighbors J & J for hot showers, and for buckets of water to keep the tanks of the commodes filled up. We have six bathrooms in this house (plus one in the barn, one in the cottage, and one connected to the garage) so we didn't have a problem with lack of toilet facilities-- as long as we had buckets of water on hand. Thank goodness for good neighbors.

My back is much better, thanks to the Ibuprofen tablets. Today should be the last day that I will need to take those, but I've already added that item to my shopping list so I'll always have some on hand. And I've already told my husband that I won't be helping him lift heavy things in and around this house anymore, not even if there is a bat inside the house. We have no idea how that bat got into the house in the first place. The bat itself is so tiny that it can fit into the smallest opening-- the wings of those small bats are huge when they're flying, but lay very close to its body when the bat is walking up a wall. Never thought I'd be writing so calmly about a bat.

The chickens hardly came out of the coop yesterday, with the snow being on the ground and frozen all around their coop and fenced-in yard. They were clearly not happy little hens during this latest hard freeze. Our neighbors J & J laughed out loud when they saw all the sheets of fabric that I had attached to the coop's fence. That was my attempt to keep as much of the cold out of the coop as I could........ they said my chickens are spoiled. Well, so what? I worry about them..... they're not just chickens, they're my chickens.

The cats have been inside for days and days now, except for Gatsby who will go outside for just minutes at a time. For an outside cat, he now prefers to be inside except when the weather is just purr-fect outside. While I was resting on the sofa in the TV room, taking the Ibuprofen pills and waiting for my back to get better, the cats just slept in that room with me, being very quiet and sleeping right along with me. (Those pills made me very tired.) Every once in a while, one of the cats would come up to me and put their nose right next to my nose, as if to say Is she still breathing? Or do we have to find someone else to feed us? Seriously, I think the cats knew that I wasn't feeling very well. Unless I have a book in my hands, they're not used to seeing me sitting still for such a long time. (And when they do see me with a book in my hands, they do their best to get right on top of the page that I'm reading.)

I was hoping this would be the last of the bad weather, but the Weather Wizards are predicting another freezing night this coming Wednesday. I am so sick of freezing temperatures, so sick of bad backs and bad weather. But it is what it is...... and what was that proverb that I typed in here a couple of months ago? "Every moment is a miracle." Well, every moment without running water makes you especially grateful for all the moments when the water was running.