Posts Tagged ‘frigid temperatures’
Magical Thinking
The horses appeared to be unfazed yesterday morning by the Arctic conditions that have been visiting us this week. I thought the magical sun dogs were a nice touch.
A beautiful visual to remind us how cold it is, in case we forget. I didn’t forget. The combination of my breath freezing on my mustache and a persistent runny nose serves as a constant reminder.
I didn’t do a very good job of keeping my mind clear of concerns about our national chaos when I was tending to the horses, but I managed to flip it around a little bit. Don’t know if they picked up on it or not.
Without coming to an inspiring conclusion, I decided to try a mental exercise of searching for a scenario that would somehow end the sickening slide to the destruction of our democracy we are suffering. Call it magical thinking.
Is there something that could influence the people who have the authority to end the corruption to come to their senses and act in the country’s interests?
Are there economic sanctions that could be enacted by other countries to interrupt the cash flow to the profiteers fleecing anything that can be fleeced? Is there an unnoticed hero-in-the-making in the ranks of the justice system who will show up with some key piece of irrefutable evidence that will allow every guilty associate of the mob running the scheme of the puppet master (somebody owns tRump) to be stopped in their tracks and held to account?
Is there a morning when we will wake up to discover our long national nightmare is over? Most importantly for me, will it happen in my lifetime? And which actor will play me in the movie?
For those of you who enjoy the phenomenon of snow sublimation as much as I do, I decided to scrape off the inch-plus of accumulated snow on the driveway near the house in the morning. When I saw how much cleaner the asphalt was by the afternoon, I decided to clear a little more.
No melting occurs at our below-zero (F) temperatures, but the pavement dries right up.
It’s like magic!
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Cold Outside
Much of the U.S. is experiencing dramatic levels of cold outside so I don’t feel alone in my experience tending to the horses this morning. There is an interesting sort of pressure pushing on you when trying to do everyday tasks at extremely cold temperatures.
The horses handle it as stoically as they always do against weather extremes. They were pretty much all business this morning as they consumed their feed pellets while I was cleaning up the incredibly hard frozen rubble of manure from around their feet.
The fresh snow cover offered clear evidence of unseen goings on overnight. Plenty of hoof prints and turned up leaves exposed deer activity in our woods that intrigued Asher greatly. The horses appear to have been active in both the hay field and the back pasture. The connecting gates between those two fields are not currently open so the horses must choose a single opening from each of the two paddocks to get out.
In the past, they have been slower to cover so much ground after a snowfall. One side or the other of the paddocks will show little to no tracks for days. This morning their tracks reveal they had been moving around more than usual in the last 14 hours.
Back inside, I had a warm couch partner keeping me company after breakfast.
I was thinking about preparing this blog post but Asher seemed to prefer I focus on him instead. He rearranged himself when I brought my computer to my lap and Cyndie took a picture.
He looks so cute it’s hard to feel frustrated with his escape yesterday morning that led to our neighbor from the south phoning to alert us to the unsanctioned whereabouts. I was plowing at the end of the driveway and hadn’t heard my phone ring. The neighbor was out plowing, too, and pulled up to share the news in person.
While we were talking, Asher came trotting back. I didn’t have a leash with me so I hopped on the Grizzly and enticed Asher to race me back to the house. He happily took up the challenge but I don’t think he liked that I decided to drive so fast he could barely keep up.
I figured it would be to our advantage to make sure he was exhausted. Taking him out for extra exercise in these temperatures is contra-indicated.
Thank goodness it is warm inside.
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Relative Something 