It's cold

It's not just cold, but cold as (insert your favorite saying here). Tia left last night on what I think is the coldest day of the year. Probably the coldest day I've experienced in Colorado, temperature wise. Thankfully there was no wind otherwise it would really be unbearable. I'm ready to go buy thermal underwear, new boots, electric heated gloves and who knows what else.

The other day I snapped this shot in the car.

We had some single digits last week, 9, 8, even 2 degrees one day and it was cold. Or so we thought. Hitting zero as I took Kendall to school was a new one. I thought that was really cold until a few days later:

In case you can't read it, it's -2F in the truck as we're heading to school. A new low and Delaney suggested I snap a picture of it. So I did and then yesterday, as I picked up Delaney, I saw this one:

Wow, now that was cold. And it was afternoon, about 4, so we thought it might get colder. It certainly did with this being the show last night as we came home from Delaney's middle school concert.

This morning when I woke up, the weather station on the wall showed -10, which was the coldest I've ever seen it be.

After getting kids to school, I then drove back home, ready to grab a bite to eat, get a cup of coffee, and fortify myself to go out to the barn. Hat on, sweathshirt, gloves, boots, ready to go.

I get out and take out a few flakes of hay to get the horses going and noticed that the water tank outside was low and had ice in the last inch or two. My first thought was that the fuse had blown, so I walked in to check the water in Gemini's stall.  It was fine, half full, liquid.

Hmmmm. I walked into the tack room for the hose, thinking I'd start filling the tank and go check fuses. The lights were on, so it didn't seem the fuse was blown. I felt the heater, on low, and it was working, although it was cooler than expected. I dragged the hose out, hooked it up and went to open the valve to check if the way was clear. It wouldn't open.

So I walked back to the tack room thinking I'd find some pliers to help loosen it and noticed the cat's water was frozen. that didn't seem right, but the water had frozen in the bowl and in about half of the  plastic bottle holding more water. Something wasn't right, and I didn't have pliers, so I walked back to the house to get some. Checked the breakers, and they were fine, grabbed pliers and a hose, and walked back. Put pliers on the valve and broke it.

@#$%%$#%#$ ice and cold weather.

Hooked up the hose from the front yard, which hasn't been used in months and shouldn't have ice in it. It did, and no water came out. At this point I was a little worried as I had a call in about 20 minutes for work. Time to go old school, using the method that I had to use a couple years ago. It goes like this:

• grab a bucket
• fill it with water (2-3 gal)
• carry it to the tank
• empty it
• repeat about 12 times

Actually I should have repeated it about 30 times, but I figured with the broken valve I'd go to the store and get a new one, a new hose, and get set up again. As soon as I submerged the heater it steamed up, so it was on and working. With 6-8" of water in there, I spread around 3 more flakes, including about 3/4 a flake of alfalfa and everything was set.

Came inside, time to work. It's going to be a long day.