A week of walks has gone down the drain due to the relentless cold weather. However, I have calculated that all the trips I’ve made up and down the stairs washing little loads of laundry to warm the pipes, dashing around the house to ensure the faucets are dribbling out tiny trickles of warm water, and opening and closing the cupboard doors that hide all the pipes should surely count for at least a mile or more.

I’m thinking about my pals in the North East portion of the United States as they grit their teeth and deal with the fourth snowstorm in as many weeks … and, a blizzard to boot. However do they do it? I just went to “Google Images” to see what those heavy-duty beauty snow melters they are using in Boston look like since I keep hearing about them on the national news.

Incredibly, Jack Frost left his calling card on the inside of my steel side door this morning. There was a pattern of frost slowly climbing up from the bottom, despite my having put barriers nearby to thwart drafts.

I dashed out of the house, pausing for a nanosecond to glance at my neighbor Marge’s outdoor thermometer and saw that the arrow hovered between -10 and 0. Brrrrrrrrrrr.

I ran the car, which started up quickly thanks to the new battery, then quickly exited the garage to escape the exhaust fumes that threatened to choke me. I slipped around the other side of the house to check the furnace pipe for icicles. The neighborhood at 9:00 a.m. looked just about as cold and barren as Siberia – the only activity was the smoke curling out of the chimneys and the dancing shadows that were made since the sun was up and out. That few minutes in which I had to remove my heavy gloves to lock up the garage door left my fingers feeling frigid and I beat it as quick as a bunny back into the house.

Through chattering teeth and with my frozen fingers wrapped around a steaming cup of English Toffee Cappuccino, I acknowledged how grateful I am for a warm home in which to hang my hat. Speaking of hats and caps, I’ve reverted to the Sherpa cap due to this extreme cold. Hey, it looks funny but it warms my ears and my head and rests just so on my eyeglasses.

The one thing I miss about wearing contact lenses, is how your eyeglasses steam up when you get back indoors. You either wait a couple of minutes for them to clear or you need to swipe ‘em off with a paper towel. Why doesn’t someone come up with the equivalent of windshield wipers for eyeglasses to use in the cold weather?

As I was sipping my hot drink my fingers finally started to thaw out, courtesy of that oversized mug, and, happily the gears in my brain started to rev up once again. That got me wondering what the Winter equivalent of “Dog Days of Summer” would be? We all bemoan those sticky, hot days in August … but, oh how we would love to be complaining about that sickening sticky heat now – of course we all say we won’t complain one bit about the hot weather … but you know come August we will. Stay warm everyone.