The coldest day in recorded history is coming...

To my area, what about yours?

Maybe the weather people are exaggerating, and I hope they are, but it's supposed to be the coldest day in recorded history in my area this Friday.

They say -30 windchill with gusts, -3 during the day; it seems either I'm reading it wrong, or it's going to be cold.

I'm in Missouri and grew up in the South, so this is cold to me; maybe in Northern states, it seems relatively mild. At least it would have been par for the course at times when I lived in Michigan for a couple of years.

Regardless, I had less than a week to think about how to prepare. For us, that means thinking about our animals and our house.

We live in a house built in the 1840s. We've been tuck-pointing it, and I think it will help with insulation. We have no central heat, but we've upped the number of heaters in each room, whether portable or baseboard. I put up sheets over windows for another layer to help contain heat. We have to keep the cabinet doors under the sinks open to keep the plumbing from freezing.

With the pets, we needed to add hay to the deep litter system (basically, the composting of grass or straw creates heat in their pen) for the chickens and keep their water from freezing over. For the horses, it's making sure they have the appropriate blankets on them and seeing that they have enough water. They have huge hay bales to munch on.

Our cats are inside/outside cats, but for that freezing spell, they will be locked on the porch. That's partly to keep them from going out since I'll have to block the cat door to keep the cold from getting in.

We have to be careful letting the dogs out too long, and we have to be prepared to relocate the guinea pigs if our power goes out. It's dangerous to go under 50 degrees for them.

We got enough food if we got snowed in, and it is my son’s 22nd birthday then so I got ingredients for a special meal for that frigid day. We finished our last minute shopping we needed to do for Christmas.

My point with all these details is that we have to prepare. This is when my learning to prepare for hurricanes, earthquakes, and blizzards in the past comes in handy. It's like my packing for trips, I've got a system down. I can't just wing it, but I don't fret about it either.

On top of all this, I just finished training for a new part-time writing gig this week.

So….It's a lot.

I've heard people say that phrase many times recently….it is a lot. It's like a collective realization that the world has a lot on it's plate. There's an element of self-care in that realization. That our time and energy isn't limitless. We only have so many “spoons.”

It looks like this storm system is going to hit a big chunk of the United States. It's nice in a way to know we are going through this together.

If you are going to be hit with similar weather, how do you prepare?

Why am I telling you these random thoughts about preparing for cold weather? There's no aha or gotcha moment. No obvious appeal to our basic human connection. Maybe just a way of talking about the weather in order to distract from other things in life. Or maybe, especially with climate change, weather is a basic human connection?

So, no pithy thoughts to wrap this up, except maybe to ask, “How is the weather in your neck of the woods?”

My dog Dixie trying to stay warm.