Brrr!!! It's cold!

I have long argued that 34 degrees and rain is the coldest I've ever been.  Now understand, I grew up in the Chicago area so I'm familiar with a hard freeze and snow and ice on the roads and snowballs and plane de-icing and snow plows and single digit wind chills and the like.  But I've lived in the greater Houston area for 24 years and in Tulsa for 11 years before that.  There is a bone chilling, miserable, wet and ugly, go right to the core of you, kind of cold that you only get at 34 degrees and rain.  I worry about the horses and now our fiber animals getting wet and cold and sick.  34 degrees and rain is really horrible.  My family always laughs at my contention.  They live in Chicago and Detroit and western Colorado where they have real winters with real cold and real snow.  But I have been convinced of my feeling about cold.  Until now.

I may have been wrong.  I got up this morning to 13 degrees and sunshine.  Very unusual for central Texas.  And REALLY COLD.  It is supposed to get above the freezing mark later this afternoon and the sun is bright and everything always looks better and happier with the sun shining.  But it's cold.  Really cold.  We have water in the house and the studio but not in the barn or the dye studio or my husband's office and certainly not from the spigots out in the pastures.  Yesterday I broke up the ice that had formed on the water troughs but this morning we will be hauling water out to the pastures.  The animals, of course, are happier with this cold than I am.  The goats and alpacas were happy in the barn last night but ready to get out and frolic in the sunshine this morning.  The horses had lots of good hay to munch on in their shelters and are just really pleased it's not 100 degrees.

I think it's possible that 13 degrees really is colder than 34 degrees and rain.