My words of Winter

Today when I was outside I started to think what winter really means to me, and I came up with a couple of scenarios that describes it better than just trying to write just some words.

The first situation has to deal with shopping. What happened yesterday kind of opened my eyes to what I would do in a pinch. It all started about 3 weeks ago when I knew that the boys would be looking for some beef jerky when they were home. There is one certain kind of mix that we like and for the life of me I couldn’t find any on the shelves. I knew that a lot of deer hunters make their own jerky, but I was surprised that the shelves were bare. It was getting down to crunch time when William wanted to take some along with him when he was going to the football game with a bunch of kids, and I still couldn’t find any. Well Daryl and I went driving around on Saturday and finally came across some. And then I got greedy. First of all I never seen such terrible looking boxes in my life – but I just had to have them … so I took all the boxes off the shelf. There would be absolutely no way that I would ever buy anything that probably looked this bad unless I was desperate. And I was desperate.

Very sad looking boxes

Looking kind of tough

Now I know that I was thinking before we found these, that no one could have needed all the boxes that the stores had. But now that I was standing there, just looking at those crumpled up boxes, I couldn’t help myself. I grabbed all of them and I felt like I won some type of huge prize or something. It’s like you become completely obsessed with having to find it and you can’t stop looking in all the stores until it’s in your cart. It’s not like anyone would die if you didn’t get it, but it’s just the thrill of the hunt.  So my first word for winter is ‘survival’.

The next thing that happened was the weather turned and it has been really cold these past couple of days. When I say cold  – I mean really cold. It was around 1 degree last night, and the wind just howling outside. So when I grabbed the bags that Santa left in the garage on Christmas this morning for the chickens and barn kitties, I was happy that they were going to get some treats. I took the first bag to the chickens and these past couple of weeks we’ve been feeding them corn instead of buying feed. The feed that we buy is layer feed and they just love it. What the feed does is that it helps them lay more eggs. But with the weather so cold, the eggs freeze in the nests. So it’s better not to even have them lay any eggs when it’s so cold outside. The do really love the layer feed better than corn though, so today they got a new big bag for the upcoming weeks. While I was in there I noticed that their nests needed some more straw. I didn’t want my chickens to get too cold, so off I went to find the bushel basket that Daryl brought home for me a couple of weeks ago. Now I don’t know if it’s just misplaced or if I’m blind, but I couldn’t find it for anything. I did find a big tote that I could use to get the straw and off to the barn I went. As long as I was going to the barn, I brought the bag of kitty food for the barn cats that live in the hay loft. With the bag on my shoulder, up the ladder I went to put it upstairs. And then it happened. When I opened the bag I saw a mid sized kitty just laying on the straw and I thought that this was kind of weird. As I got closer, I saw that she was frozen. I just stood there not really understanding why this would happen. There is so much straw up in the barn, why would she not go deep inside the pile and stay warm? I opened up the bag anyway for the rest of the kitties and started to look around. Soon I found another smaller little kitty out in the open also dead. What in the world was going on? It wasn’t like they looked sick or anything, so I’m not sure what happened. All I can say is that this better be the end of that! The little kitties that sneak down and sleep in the heated dog pail better be telling the other kitties to come down with them the next time!  So my next word is ‘cold’.

Icicles

 on the chicken coop

My last word has to deal with clothes. I’m sitting upstairs in our farmhouse and can hear the wind blowing outside. After I realized that it is much louder than it should be, I found out that Kyle didn’t have his windows shut completely in his room. So now it’s getting warmer up here and I’m sitting in my nice new jammies that I got for Christmas and feeling pretty warm and comfortable. There is something about getting new pajamas for winter that makes hearing the cold wind outside not so bad after all. So my last words that remind me of a winter in Iowa is ‘New Christmas pajamas’. I just heard the furnace kick in, so I better be off and check the rest of the windows.

I made a couple of cards that I needed to catch up on today:

Wedding card

Baby card