Well, I should've listened to my Dad (again!). But the end result was that I earned a winter survival badge...

It's subzero here in PA. I knew that without looking at a thermometer! I was outside and my eyebrows got all prickly. It's funny how you never notice that you have individual eyebrow hairs until each one of them is strangely stiff from the arctic air.

The second reason I knew it was below zero is that when I came indoors, my fingers were too cold to unzip my coat. Which leads to the bit about listening to Dad. Earlier, my Mom called to say Dad thought they should tell me to leave my water running so it didn't freeze up (their usual MO). Unfortunately, I thought I had outsmarted the weather and didn't have to worry. Ha!

I had piled snow around the foundation hip high so no air could get under the house, therefore I had a good workout unpiling the snow so that I could crawl under the house and put an electric heater there to warm things up a bit. Oh the joys of being single with no man to do the dirty work!

My second major accomplishment of the evening was to teach my 10-year-old mad scientist son the fine art of eating jello with a straw (believe me it's not as easy as it sounds). No, I'm not crazy! Remember the frozen water? Well.... no clean spoons. We laughed at the silly slurping sounds it made and eventually he got good enough to make it nearly musical.

Alas, it was the first little cup of jello in a pack of 24. I'm afraid I'll have a jello addict on my hands by the time the pack is gone (which could be tomorrow if I don't watch him carefully!).

The good news! My water just started running again (12:23 a.m.). I think I'll leave it running, Dad!