We are entering the bragging stage of a cold snap. You know, the it’s colder at my house than your’s phase, when we say things like, ” We skated across Chilkoot and it was so cold I had to keep my eyes shut or they’d freeze” or “I wore my gloves in exercise class the weights were so cold” and “I’m still walking the dog, but all I can see through my face mask with my head down are my boots.” The clear skies and sunshine are wasted. In yoga last night there was ice on the inside of the dance studio windows. Maybe we can popularize “cold yoga?” (I did read once, that the figures of Parisian women, those fabulously stylish and slim cheese and croissant eaters who never seem to sweat, can be attributed to the lack of central heating and indoor winter temperatures there hovering around 50.) Still, the darling Davis family are all still marching to school wrapped up like mummies and hockey is being played non-stop it seems. (As long as you are moving you’re toasty.) On the radio this morning Jeremy read the forecast, calling for 30-40 below wind chills today, but only 20-30 below tomorrow with a couple inches of fresh snow, and then paused a minute and observed that 20 below was good news, right? The mercury read 13 below at the pool manager’s house at 18 Mile this morning. God knows what the wind chill was. My hens don’t care, but they haven’t produced an egg in a week, so I dropped in to buy a local dozen at Mountain Market after swimming. Anna rang me up wearing a hat, heavy sweater and fingerless gloves, like a clerk out of a Dickens’ novel. The coffee drinkers were gathering. One social consequence of the deep freeze is that rather than stay in our ice caves stoking the fire, folks are heading out and about. It was 4 and blowing at our house when John dropped in for oatmeal, and just as he was leaving my 81 year old neighbor stopped in to say hello on her way to the post office and grocery store. She smiled when she said she was stocking up, just “in case” the weather service is wrong about tomorrow’s snow and there’s more. “You never know,” she said.
If you have made the rounds of family and friends and the Market and are looking for a few other ways to warm up, the planning commission meets Thursday night at 6:30 and on the agenda is a proposed helicopter port off the Farm road, the Dick Hotch city league basketball tournament starts tomorrow at the school, there are home games against Craig Friday and Saturday night too, SAIL’s Valentine’s Day fundraiser is at Harriett Hall Friday, and the Arts Council’s Northern Light Showcase is Sunday night in the Chilkat Center.
