Hi.
For the past week, it’s been so cold here it’s incomprehensible. I’m afraid to look at the weather report because I don’t want to know how long it’s going to last. The cold is draining. It makes me tired. I don’t want to go out at night, because I’ll never warm up again. I can’t put enough hand lotion on to keep the skin on my fingers from cracking and bleeding. It’s miserable. When you step outside, it takes about three seconds for the cold to register; if you’re smart, you’ve run fast enough to make it back indoors or to your car in that amount of time. This morning, my car told me it was -20 degrees outside. That’s a new low; it’s been hovering between -10 and -15 all week. I have to drive a couple miles before Chico will accelerate over 25 mph. He makes horrible creaking noises, and the CD player isn’t working right. He also keeps warning me to service the antitheft system, but since it only does that when it’s really cold, I think it might be a fluke. I’m not sure. In the morning, I get up, get dressed, and put on a gigantic turquoise parka that April brought upstairs one day. It’s big enough to wrap twice around me, which is exactly what I want. I run out and start my car, and in the 20 minutes or so it sits running in the driveway, the temperature needle has barely started to creep upwards. If I’m lucky, the seat warmer hasn’t cycled off, and at least my ass will be warm. It’s something. On the other hand, the severe cold makes for some incredible atmospheric conditions. The sunrise is always beautiful. This morning, the air was full of ice crystals, and I saw the most amazing sun dog I’ve ever seen. There was almost a full halo in the sky. I’m pretty sure the worst side-effect of the cold is that it makes all us Minnesotans boring as hell. The only thing we can talk about is the weather. Jenni