Still cold

It is still freezing cold! Temps have not gotten above 30 F for so long now. I feel trapped in this horrid cold. Our front door freezes shut every night. Richard found my old hair dryer and uses it to melt the ice on the bottom of the door. But then it refreezes and we struggle to get out of the house again. Our windows ice over every night--1/4 to 1/2 inch, and then melt off through the day (if there is sun). I have used every single towel I have here in the house, trying to mop up the melting water.

Bathroom window

Last night I forgot to put the heater on in the living room. The main part of the house got down to 60 F overnight. Our bedroom/sunroom gets down to 59 F regularly, even with a heater and foam insulation in the windows. Last night it got down to 56 F.

I wonder what will happen in the house when the outside temps get down to -30 F? We may have to figure out how to get the old wood stove up and functioning. This is a task unto itself as we have to clear the room of furniture and other stuff (our buckets of flour...our pantry) if we want to use it. The stove is way too big for the tiny room it's in. Plus we should really get the chimney cleaned, which is another $150. The chimney has never been cleaned, according to the landlords who have owned this house for ten years or so. I'm afraid to use the stove without cleaning the chimney. I have seen the rubble of houses all around the valley---houses that burned. There is no fire department here, but maybe in Costilla or San Luis, some miles away. Too far to make a difference.

I have to move my birds (parrot and dove) out of the sunroom/bedroom because it's getting too cold in there. I guess they will share some space with the kids in their tiny room.

At least the animals outside are still doing okay, even though the goat barn still needs to be closed in better. We have to go to Santa Fe (or Pueblo) to get some clear Lexon panels for the barn siding. This will allow some light and maybe some heat into the barn. The goats would break any glass we try to use, so we are going to try those panels instead. We have to wait for the weather to warm enough that we can leave our dogs outside while we make the trip, which usually takes a full day, and has us getting back after dark. It is way too cold to leave the dogs out for that amount of time, and I don't want to kennel them for so long either.

Sometimes things just seem so hard, don't they? The cold always makes everything worse. And it's a matter of life and death for some of us, so we just have to keep plugging away, doing what we can with the time and money we have. I suppose things might be different if we lived in a decent house and had a heated barn for the critters. But, we don't.

Moving south seems like a great idea every winter. And then the summer comes and I forget how miserable and cold it is during the winter. I suppose we are blessed in the fact that none of the housing choices we were looking at worked out up here in the San Luis Valley. Maybe the Universe knows better than me, and perhaps my urge to move south of Albuquerque means more than I think. Maybe I should listen to my inner urgings. We worry about water down that way as the Southwest dries up. But at least it is warmer and there is no fracking going on (yet). Plus the livestock taxes are disturbing, so we may have to rethink that too.

Today we are headed to Taos to pay our rent while the bank is still open. That was the agreement, to deposit our check in the landlords' account. I wonder what we do if we can't get there? That seems absurd, doesn't it? But, I hate driving on snow/ice packed roads, especially on mountain roads. The forecast for the next week...freezing fog with periods of sunshine.