Sunday, February 10, 2008, 07:03
40 Below Zero
The weather is really nasty here this weekend. A few snow flurries fell Saturday morning. The temperature was in the 20s then. In the afternoon, the sky cleared off and Arctic high pressure roared in with strong winds out of the west/northwest. Saturday night when I went outside to check on the horses and to let Charlie out, it was 15 degrees below zero Fahrenheit with the wind gusting 30 to 40 mph. The windchill was 40 to 50 below zero.
When the weather is bad or unsettled, Isabelle starts to act up. I don't know. Maybe she thinks I'm responsible for the weather. When I brought a bucket of warm water to the fence, she was just finishing her third snack of grain for the day. She wheeled around and backed up and acted like she was thinking about kicking.
I decided I ought to wait outside the fence until she calmed down. I knew if she kicked me and broke my leg, or something, so that I couldn't get back to the house, I would freeze to death in a very short time.
Eventually she settled down a little bit and moved away from the fence. I crawled through the fence with the bucket of the water. I kept a close eye on her as I carried the water to her shelter. I had to yell at her a couple of times to keep her away from me, but finally, she ran into her shelter and started munching on the fresh pile of hay I had put out there for her.
We spent all Saturday afternoon making meatballs and peeling potatoes for our meatball dinner at church on Sunday, but I fear that it was an exercise in futility. The weather forecast says the wind is going to continue like this right on through Sunday. With such cold weather, we probably will only get a handful of people at our church dinner. It wouldn't be so bad, being so cold and windy, but we got just enough snow Saturday morning, and a couple of fluffy inches during the week, that the wind is really blowing the snow around so that it's drifting and covering the roads in places.
Getting a complex
I could end up with some kind of psychological complex here. Duke has now gotten to the point that all I have to do is reach out and pet him and he is gagging and retching. Between the Petinnic and the Amoxicillan, I have to give him doses five times a day of something that makes him gag and retch. So I suppose he figures he might as well gag as soon as he sees me and get it over with. Randy says I shouldn't take it personally. It's kind of hard, though, when the cat you've had for more than 16 years who has always been a very loving and wonderful companion gags whenever he sees you.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Saturday, February 09, 2008, 05:11
More of the Same
And here I thought we were out of our drought. But now I don't think so.
We have had 20-some inches of snow here, and on the news Friday night, we heard that the southern part of the state has had more than 70 inches of snow.
That's the same pattern we had last summer. We were so dry here that the marshes were dry and everything was burning up. And the southern part of the state had so much rain that there was widespread flooding.
The beginning of December started out well with quite a bit of snow. We were able to snowshoe throughout December. But then in January, we had a period of thaw that melted the snow down so that it is hard and crusty, and since then, we haven't gotten enough new snow to make it possible to snowshoe.
And now it is going to turn cold again with lows below zero and highs only in the single digits.
I don't mind saying that this kind of weather of intense cold with no new snow is getting old fast. I am getting tired of winter. And we've still got two full months to go before it is possible for spring to arrive.
Duke
I think Duke might be starting to feel a little bit better. He still gets dehydrated easily, though, and I ended up giving him fluid twice on Friday, in the morning and in the evening.
The reason I think he is feeling better -- feeling more perky and with it -- is that he is reacting more when I jab him with the needle to give him fluid. Before this, I think he felt so rotten that he simply didn't care. He is still very good about it, however, and once the fluid starts running under his skin, he settles down and waits it out. Going to the litter box, unfortunately, still wears him out and he has to lie down for a while to rest when he is finished.
LeAnn R. Ralph