Oh the weather outside...

Here is my new song.

Oh the weather outside is frightful

and the fire (if we had one) would be so delightful

and since we have places to go

it'll snow, it'll snow, it'll snow!

Our furnace is acting up. It stops coming on. It gets pretty cold in here. The darned thermostat is a pain in the bum. It says low battery - even though we just put new batteries in it. It only happens in really cold weather, of course. C. vacuumed out the actual furnace the other night - but no dice. We have to actually walk over to the thermostat, venture a guess as to whether it might come back on, and if it seems too cold and likely that it will not, we flip the switch to "off", wait a few minutes, then turn it back on. I've actually been waking myself up in the middle of the night to make sure we don't freeze to death. More importantly, that the pipes don't freeze, because that might be worse than freezing to death. Yesterday I had a really bad headache and was actually trying to convince myself that somehow, I was being poisoned by carbon monoxide, when C. reminded me that we have a carbon monoxide monitor in the bedroom. OH! Good thing. Still, I was up at 3:30, making sure that the furnace would turn on. It did, then it didn't. I "slept" on the couch. Waking again at 7:30 and was up for the day. 

I'd like to take this opportunity to voice my opinions about snow. It is lovely. For about a day. Then I'm pretty much done. I don't like to drive in it and, I don't like to be out in it very much. If I want to see snow, I'd rather have to drive to see it. i.e., go to our favorite sledding place in the mountains. I'd also like to state here that - I am an Oregon girl through and through. I have never, until last winter, owned cold weather gear. Then C. got fed up and outfitted me with snow pants, snow boots, proper gloves, etc... I love the rain but when nature turns against me and gets to 32 degrees, I get angry. Precipitation should remain pretty much harmless, in my opinion. Wet-yes. White-no. I'm all for shutting down everything and waiting it out. That's what my fellow Oregonians do - they wisely close schools, ask you to stay off the roads and remind you to stock up on bread, milk and eggs until the inch of slushy white stuff that passes for snow is gone. They will drag out the snowplows for minor flurries and I, for one, am only too glad. Here they expect you to slide around in your car, slog around in 12-14 inches of the stuff and call you a coward if you want to stay inside. They rarely cancel school, instead forcing you to get up at 5:00 in the morning to check the news to see IF they actually came to their senses. Not for me my friends, I take the bus, have about 3 loaves of bread in the fridge, 2 gallons of milk and whine and whine about getting a wood stove. 

Still, it is almost - pretty?