In the heart of winter...

...That's the phrase I just heard from the weather wizards on TV... "Hunker down, folks, because we have just found ourselves in the heart of winter."  Oh goodie.

The seven-day forecast doesn't look any better than the last couple of days we've had here.  We can expect temperatures in the 40s during the day, and into the low 30s at night.  We'll have one day of 50 degrees, which will probably seem like a heat wave after all of this.  And tomorrow, we could see some freezing rain.  I'll repeat:  Oh goodie.

We've been in the house for two days. I've gone outside just to put trash in the can, and I've been inside the garage to feed Mickey and to spend some time with him in there every few hours or so. Mickey's half of the garage is warm, thanks to that heater.... and he seems to be okay.  I think he's getting cabin fever, though, because he clearly wants to go outside.  Not going to happen... not when it's this cold, this cloudy, with not a drop of sunlight anywhere.   I don't want to have to walk around the property looking for him, and if I have to keep that garage door open so he can get in and out by himself, then the heater isn't going to work very well in there.  Mickey will just have to be content with the inside of the garage, and he can walk through the little door into the coop if he wants some fresh air.  Fresh air?  It's more like frozen air.  Give me a blessed break.

I'm glad we don't have chickens anymore. I used to worry about the hens in cold weather like this. All the chicken books say that birds don't feel the cold that much... they fluff up their feathers to insulate themselves against the cold and they huddle together to keep warm. I still worried about the chickens being too cold out in the coop. My husband says that I transfer my own feelings about the cold onto every living thing out there, and maybe I do.  All I know is, cold is cold, and it isn't fun.  I went through winters like this up in New York for 40 years, and moving down here and getting this type of cold weather is not what we had in mind when we headed for Texas.

Oh well, it is what it is.  And it is freaking cold.