Tuesday, February 06, 2007

wishin' it was spring already...

I hate winter. Have I mentioned that lately?

Yesterday and today has been "freeze your butt off" cold. School was cancelled. Yesterday's coldest temp was around -8 F. This morning, my sweetie was nice enough to walk Skye for her first potty of the day, and it was -14. Yes, that is a minus sign in front of the number. UGH!

Today we spent the better part of the day dealing with a frozen water situation. We get our water from an old spring house at the edge of the woods. The water then goes into two different holding tanks, then continues down to us as needed. Well, the main gate valve was not covered properly (for whatever reason) and it froze. Lee and Daddy made a reflector around the valve and had a Coleman propane heater on it for many hours. Meanwhile, we were doing our best to scrounge up breakfast and lunch that did not require lots of pots/dishes/etc. And of course, no toilet flushing. Thank God for baby wipes and hand sanitizer. Hours passed and then finally....water!! So now the gate valve is really super-duper insulated.

Then later tonight, after washing up most of the dishes, we noticed that the tub had begun to collect water. Yep...another problem. The main drainage pipe was frozen. Luckily, the toilet has a seperate drain directly to the septic. So, the water in the tub was just handwashing water and dishwater. Anyway, now that's been taken care of, too.

And....we're getting lots and lots of snow as I'm typing this. School is already on a two-hour delay, and I'm guessing they will decide to close it for tomorrow, too. We've been hearing 1-3", other forecasts say 2-4", and we even heard a forecast earlier that said up to five in low-lying areas and up to 12" in the mountainous regions.

Winter sucks.

Here are some fabrics that make me think of spring, sherbert, and warm sunshine. The colors are actually a little less intense in person, but you get the idea.