Stupid Cold

Stupid cold is what call it around here when the temperature gets below zero degrees. Fahrenheit. With wind chill factors in the negative double-digits. We call it stupid cold because when you're standing out in it (to, for example, wait for the school bus), your brain cells feel like they are freezing. We also call it stupid cold because at times like this we fell utterly stupid for living anyplace that it gets this cold.

It's temporary, of course, but it feels as if it goes on forever. Just one day of this feels as if it goes on forever. There's ice on the front door window in the morning, and the caked snow in the car's wheel wells is frozen solid and has to be chipped out with the ice scraper.

When you stand near an exterior wall (or worse, a window), you can feel the outside cold sucking the inside heat right through the wall (and this on a well-insulated house).

But we're lucky, in a couple of ways. We're not further south, where there's much more snow to deal with. Our house is new, and although we do have one water line that freezes up when it's this cold, it's a PEX line and not in danger of bursting. All we have to do is ride out the cold and everything will be just fine.

Not everyone in New England can say that.