Oh the weather outside is frightful...

...and nothing, absolutely nothing, is delightful! Ok well maybe a few things. Really cool ice forms on things when its really cold outside. By "things" I mean items inside our house that really shouldn't have ice on them. Here, take a look:

First, LOOK AT THAT TEMPERATURE!

 

-18!

 

Do you know what -18 feels like? Well I don't really know because not only has it been between -18 and -25 the wind has been blowing. The "real feel" has been around -35. NEGATIVE 35! That's miserable.

 

Do you remember when you were a kid and you would be outside, playing the in the nice soft fluffy snow? Think back to how you would feel after a few hours of building igloos and having snowball fights. Your gloves always ended up on the ground right? Remember what it felt like when a snowball hit you in the side of the head? Yeah, you remember. The snowballs that felt like torpedoes shooting straight down into your ear canal. Now, with your frozen little finger you're frantically digging the snow out of your ear because you can feel your brain starting to freeze; but those poor little fingers don't work. They don't move like they should. Now is when you start crying. You're now officially cold, miserable and have a headache. Well, imagine that...only 50 times worse!! That's what -35 feels like. When I walk from our front door to my car (which is maybe 10 feet) I hold my breath. It feels like I'm breathing liquid ice. I'm pretty sure that if I breathe in too hard my lungs will crack. Lungs aren't meant to adjust to temperatures so fast. They're just not!

 

Next lets talk about ears. Everybody knows I have super sensitive baby ears that have issues. This cold does not help! I can go from feeling just fine to a few steps out the door and I'm almost crippled with pain. The wind blows so hard and that cold air rushes right down to my ear drum. Instant headache! The kind of headache that makes me want to squeeze my brain. Its a strange, intense feeling; having such cold air in your ears. Its not like you can just rub your hand on your ear and warm it up. The warm air takes its time, leisurely working its way down to the bottom of your ear. For freezing in an instant it sure takes ears a long time to get warmed up!

 

Nose hairs! Gross I know, but everybody has them, lets talk about how they handle the cold. Remember, this all happens from walking 10 feet outside... My nostrils freeze to the point that I can't breathe through them! They're clogged. I have to pinch my nose closed just to break the ice in there so I can continue breathing! While we're on the subject of breathing, people with sensitive teeth are in for a real struggle. While most people can breathe through their mouths if their noses freeze up, people with sensitive teeth can't. When you open your mouth, even if its just to smile, the cold air from breathing and the wind blowing instantly hits your little sensitive teeth. You go from perfect mouth to frozen teeth that are about to crack with just one tiny breath. They get so cold I can almost hear my teeth cracking when I'm outside!

 

When I get into the car and I see the thermometer is below -10 I know my car isn't going to start. Its just not going to. There is something that happens after -10, my car just gives up. Literally, it gives up. It throws a temper tantrum and spits oil all over the ground. Frankly, I agree with it.  I'm not going to fight it. If the car doesn't want to start I'm not going to make it. I don't want to be outside if its that cold!

 

Ok, moving on, lets talk about ice. This picture is of the inside of our closet. Yes, that's ice in the corner.

 

This next picture is of our back door. See how the ice is forming around the edges, its been spreading for days now. That door is completely frozen shut.

 

 

This picture is of the cupboard where I keep our electric blanket. I pulled it out the other day and it was covered in ice. I had to lay it flat, turn it on just to defrost the thing, then I had to wait for it to dry before I could put it on my bed to keep me warm!

 

The next two pictures are the corner between my side of the bed and the wall.

 

I'm sleeping inches away from this! Sometimes at night the pillow actually freezes to the wall and I have to rip it off.

 

Now we're getting into the cool pictures, these are around our windows.

 

 

I like the texture that the ice has. You would think it would be smooth right? Its not. Its like horizontal stalagmites. (There's a word for those right? What is it?) Anyway, super cool.

 

Just so everybody knows, its so cold the water in our trailer froze. Its so cold, our freezer froze and quit working. And... its so cold that the school districts did a late start where school started 2 hours late due to the cold temperatures and ice!

 

But don't worry, Bret spent an ENTIRE day under our trailer reinsulating, adding more heat lamps and sealing everything up. He also added a thermometer down there, the kind that has a receiver that we keep in the house. Now its staying a toasty 70 degrees down there. This morning it was actually 98! We don't have to worry about our water freezing up again. The freezer, its still down. We haven't figured out the best way to defrost the outside of a freezer yet. A bunch of our neighbors are having the same issue this year. Luckily, we really only kept meat and veggies in this freezer. Our important stuff like ice cream and waffles stayed safe in our big freezer in the shed. ;)