We got ice.  All the fence lines, barbed and no-climb, are coated in a quarter inch of ice.  Wrecks all over the place.  IH35 (the major highway from Mexico to Canada) is closed from Jarrell to Salado (which means, my neck of the woods, just two miles away if I could get there), due to the unique slant of the highway there that makes semis go sliding back down the slope if they should make it even partway up.  (We - the town, small enough not to even have a flashing yellow -  put up 400+ people due to that a few years back, the highway being closed from here to Waco, some 73 miles, that year.)

Windchill of 9.  I'm out here by myself because my husband had the good sense to camp out at work last night rather than become a statistic by getting stuck or wrecked somewhere trying to get home.

I went out to feed, and Lydia, who lived in Vermont for her first six years and for whom, consequently, this is a mere piffle, came out to meet me.  But Memory, Texas bred and born, was lying down on the hay in the barn (left over from the round bale in there) and she wasn't about to get up until she was sure I was putting hay in the feeder.  "See???  I told you and told you and TOLD you it was going to turn into Vermont one day!  Didn't I tell you?  And I was RIGHT!!!!"   (Memory, from birth, has put on a heavy winter coat early and kept it late, despite having been born right here; she has a very strong Morgan racial memory of COLD!!!!!)

For breakfast, hot oatmeal.  Last night I had gumbo for dinner.  The rest of the time, what can I find to put in me that's, above all, HOT.  (I, too, am Texas bred and born, and don't always deal with cold with good graces.)

I'm wearing a hat, my winter pajamas, my purple fleece all-in-one bunny suit with "Lead Mare" embroidered on the breast, thick warm socks, and shoes.  When I went out to feed, I added the ski jacket I bought ten years ago when I was VP of the Lippitt Club (a club for supporters of a particular family of traditional Morgan bloodlines) and was going up to Massachusetts for a meeting in January (it turned out to be in the 50's while we were there - go figure).  Oh, and warm gloves - I do have warm gloves!

And they say it's going to be in the 60's this weekend.  One thing you can
say about Central Texas weather - as long as it's not August, it's certainly
not boring!