Bloody Cold

Have to crawl out of my bag, one in the morning, bring the radio up from mute and it's blue-grass from West Virginia. Flip on the back-porch light and go outside to pee. A generous five degrees. The leaf litter is a brittle frozen mat. Quick back to bed. Cold in the house, when the sun wakes me, but I manage to get a fire started and heat water to shave. To walk down to the Jeep, I wear high-tech long underwear, jeans, my heaviest denim shirt, Carhartt blanket-lined jacket, muffler, Linda hat, fleece gloves. The driveway is frozen so hard, it seems like a completely new material. Thankfully, no ice on the vehicle, I can get right in, start the heater, and the heated leather seats. I can't imagine why I should feel bad about this, it just seems slightly decadent for my ass to be so comfortable. All the surface water, the lakes, the flooded lowlands, are sheets of ice; even the fast running creeks are frozen in places. It's very beautiful. Before the cold snap, it had been warm enough for water to hit the various levels of cap rock and flow out of the hillsides in a thousand wet-weather seeps: an entire landscape of huge icicles. Layer upon layer, some of them small, but some of them as large as small houses. Especially visible in road cuts. Big group meeting and discussion about the main floor bathrooms at the museum. I draw the line at putting a wood floor at the back entry (being converted into a main entry) because I can barely maintain the ceramic tile that's there now, and these people have no idea the destructive powers of salt. Struggled up to 13 degrees today, and at 2:30 Pegi told me to go home, start a fire; I had no argument, stopped at Kroger, and at the bottom of hill, getting my pack together, B pulled in, gave me a ride to the top. He offered to help me buck wood next weekend, and I accepted. Jesus, it's cold. The next house I build will be underground, have no windows, and one door. I have to go get my hands warm.