Brrrr

You know what is a really great way to start your morning? Wake up at 5:30, an hour before your alarm is scheduled to go off, because your nose, the only part of you not covered in something fluffy and filled with down, senses that the temperature in your house has dropped below 45 degrees. Oh, but it can get better. After you get the fire blazing again, and the kettle on for tea, you might find when you go out to start your car, the car that you parked so poorly the night before in the dark and snow that you have to climb on top of a pile of firewood to reach the driver's door . . . you can find that door frozen shut. So then you might have the chance to climb back over the woodpile, and around to the passenger side which is miraculously not entombed in ice, and clamber over the gearshift and the emergency break, only to realize that, yes, as you suspected, these jeans really are too tight to see the light of day.

And did you know that on a really frosty morning, when the pine trees look white and the fence posts and every blade of grass is sparking with frozen fog, even horses, living, breathing, moving mammals, can be covered with a glittery skin of frost?