FFFFFUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKK

It's damn cold.  It's really fucking damn cold.  It's cold like I moved away from Manhattan, KS, to get away from.  

It started Sunday.  I went to visit my mom and sister.  The temperature was starting to drop when I went up.  By the time I left for home, we were getting slushy mist: it was sorta frozen when it hit the car, then thawed, then re-froze.  I had an utter bitch of a time keeping the windshield clear of ice enough for safe driving.  And there was a quarter inch of ice frozen over the headlights and front end of the car.  

And the temperature kept dropping.  

Monday, the kids' school was cancelled because the roads weren't safe, and neither were the parking lots.  It never got above freezing, that day.  And we had freezing fog.  

Tuesday wasn't any better.  Wednesday got colder--it never got above 19 degrees.  Thursday...well, yesterday, it snowed a bit, hovered between seventeen and nineteen, and the water line to the washing machine froze.  

I got up this morning around 5:40 to take my thyroid meds, and get a drink of water.  It sounded...weird.  Labored.  So I left that tap on a drip, and other half turned the heater in the bathroom on when he went in.  

It's still dripping.  Because it's still only 12 degrees.  Running the propane fireplace heater, an infrared heater, and three oil heaters has it around 67 degrees in the main part of the house.  And that is with about half a foot of insulation added to the bit that was there, and another six inches under that where there hadn't been any.  

 I'm going to go through and turn up all the heaters.  Because between the frigid cold and the wind, they're just not quite keeping up.  

Next week won't be any better, either.  We've got snow in the forecast.  Our local weather guy has noticed that our weather systems repeat every couple of months, and we're heading back into the same system that dumped a half inch of ice on us right after Christmas (and broke a lot of trees).  Weather guy says this time, with as cold as it is, we're likely to have around 5-7"...minimum...of snow.  Could be a lot more than that.  I wouldn't be surprised, with as humid as it is, and still this cold.  

The kids have been out of school for a week.  And it looks like they won't have much, if any, next week, either. 

When I was in grad school, in Manhattan, KS, we got something like 18" of snow dumped on top of 2" of ice, and it stayed in the single digits for highs for two weeks, and didn't get out of the teens for another couple.  That was a few hours north of here.  

I moved south because I wanted to get away from weather like that.  I live where we have venomous snakes and mosquitoes the size of attack helicopters because I don't like it when the air hurts my face.  Because when the air hurts my face, the rest of me hurts bad enough that I don't sleep well.