I'm sure you're all sick of hearing about the weather, but cold continues to keep my interest, especially when I wake up to -10 degrees Fahrenheit.  That's frigid enough that I can only barely do my morning chores, and that the chickens don't even want to leave their warm roosts for fresh food and water.  I skip Lucy's walk, and only go out to see how frozen the creek is in the afternoon, when the sun has brought temperatures up to 22.

We don't go outside to work when it's this cold, but there are projects that require our attention.  The most pressing is drinking water.  That line usually stays thawed even when the wash-water line freezes, but the drinking-water line froze up a week ago Monday.  Since then, we've been going through our stored water, and finally came to an end, just one day before Mom promised me five more cleaned-out milk jugs full of water.

The solution?  I tried melting snow, which is feasible, if time-consuming.  The three inches that fell Tuesday night are so fluffy, though, that each gallon only melts down into a single cup of water.  Instead, Mark had the bright idea of ladling out the gallon of water that settled in the bottom of our drinking water tank --- we could have poured it, but then would have had to let the sediment settle out again.

After tiding over our thirst, we turned back to sedentary tasks.  The great thing about a cold, snowy winter is that it gives me plenty of guilt-free time to write!