We are having an ice day. Not a nice day, but an ice day. Well, the sun has been shining, and that's nice, but last night the temperature went down about ten degrees lower than it was supposed to. 19 degrees is not the same as 28 degrees, especially not when you have exposed water pipes under your house and you only left two faucets running just in case.
Thank goodness for those two faucets, because that's the only running water we have today. It has gone up to a steamy 35 degrees, which isn't enough to melt the frozen pipes that are, shall we say, where the sun don't shine. So...no hot water. No shower. Toilets, yes, but we have to fill buckets with water from the running faucets to flush them. No dishwasher, no washing machine.
Shut up and be glad the power is on, I tell myself. It went off for a few minutes in the middle of the night, and there are people today who don't have power. Or heat.
The powers that be have been telling everyone to stay off the roads because of icy conditions. Last night we had sleet, lots of it. Snow is pretty. Sleet isn't. Be glad the ancient power lines outside our house, the ones that survived Katrina, didn't get enough ice on them to break.
It's supposed to get very cold again tonight. And then, surprise! It will be warm by the weekend! (Winters in New Orleans are like that.)
Warm again too late for my plants that froze...the ones I thought I could leave outside if it was "only" going down to 28. Those two pots of lavender were so pretty. They aren't any more. And I think it is time to harvest the frozen broccoli.
And when the thaw does come, I'm going to find out if any of those pipes under the house froze. The local plumbers are going to be soooo busy for the next few weeks!
And I have a new name for the cats: Organic Portable Lap Heaters.
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