My Books
In the Cold
I somehow lucked out and managed to move north and into the mountains in time for the coldest winter in fifteen years. The temperatures have been below average for almost the entire month. There’s been snow on the ground for nearly three weeks. This week it was below freezing all week, with temperatures in the single digits overnight.
It hasn’t been too bad, aside from the fact that I live in a basement where the cold comes up through the floor. I’ve dealt with that by covering as much of the floor as possible. I don’t want to buy carpets for a place that’s meant to be only temporary, so I’ve used things like exercise mats, beach towels, and the big moving blanket my mover left with me. The walls are more than a foot thick, and they’ve put new windows outside the original wood-framed windows, so the place is pretty well insulated. The weak spot is the back door, which is the original 100-year-old door with a window in it. I resorted to “redneck weatherproofing” there, stuffing plastic bags into the gaps around the door and stacking the cushions from the patio furniture against the door to block the drafts, as well as putting a second layer of curtains over the window. That seems to have worked pretty well.
I’ve spent the week bundled up in warm clothes under an electric blanket, so I was pretty comfortable. There was also baking (since the oven helps warm the house while producing something to eat). I did not try to venture out because I don’t have the clothes for this. My coats and sweaters are fine, but I need to get better pants or find a good base layer. I got some snow boots last week that should help keep my feet warm, but I haven’t tested them yet. I’d rather endure this for a few weeks than have 105-degree temperatures for a month and around 100 for another couple of months.
Much of the snow is gone from my front yard, aside from the places where it got piled up by the snow plow, but the back yard is still totally covered in snow. It looks like a different world depending on which window I look out. I got the fun experience of shoveling snow last week. It took a lot of effort to dig my car out enough to move it from behind the wall of snow left by the plow.
But it’s going above freezing this weekend, and I’m hoping to get outside a bit more. I like cool weather, I just am not crazy about freezing weather. We had a reasonably warm day last Friday, and I went out to the Frontier Culture museum to go walking. There was snow on the ground, but the paths were clear. It was fun walking around looking at the snow without being too cold.
The other thing I did this week was update my website. I’ve added some photo galleries to the pages for the Rydding Village books, with some visuals of my inspiration for the village and some looks at the crafts mentioned in the books. I got to see a wood-fired brick bread oven in action, and I put the photos on my site. Maybe that will help you visualize the things happening in the books.