I should have saved my complaints about the cold from yesterday morning for this morning. It is really freaking cold this morning. 25ºF! I know, I know it gets colder and IS colder elsewhere this morning, but a long overnight and low freeze is not an everyday event in Austin. Having more than one so close together –I swear it’s been non-stop since winter began– well that’s just plain weird. They’ve been saying this winter is the coldest winter we’ve had here in a long time, and I agree. It’s just not right or normal!

The only thing in the garden that is covered with plastic at the moment is the lettuce, which has already been showing signs of frost burn and has been covered for weeks now day and night, and one bed of carrots and radishes, which has also been covered since before Xmas. I probably should have gone out there and covered everything, but I am sort of at the point with the garden now that anything still alive out there is doing so poorly that if it survives the weather and being ignored by me and STILL manages to produce anything, I’ll be saving it for seed … because that’s one hardy plant. In other words, I’ve given up on the garden. Nature can take its course. Either the stuff grows and produces or it dies. I’m not going outside in cold weather like this to tend to whatever might be out there. Brrrr.

But that’s not what I sat down to post about! There’s been an unusual event in the kitchen this morning. While I was standing at the espresso machine mindlessly making Lin’s morning coffee, I felt a cat rubbing against my legs. Nothing entirely unusual about that, as Tora does occasionally rub against my legs when she feels she must have some attention, but this wasn’t Tora. The cat rubbing against me was a large cat. A very large cat. RONIN! He has never –not once– rubbed up against a human for any reason whatsoever. He’s just not that kind of cat. Or at least he used to not be that kind of cat. I think Tora’s sweet, adorable, and totally manipulative ways are rubbing off on him. We may end up with three loving and adorable (and totally manipulative) cat masters after all. I don’t mind being a cat slave, so long as the beasts at least act the part of adoring cats. Hope this trend continues!

Oh, and I knew it was going to be really cold in the house before I pulled even one bit of my person out of the nice warm bed too. How? Lin and I had all three cats lined up down the center of the bed between us when the alarms started going off. This almost never happens. In fact, I think it’s the first time all three of them have been on the bed at the same time when there are also two humans in bed. Hey, it’s a smallish bed (queen size), and there really isn’t all that much room for a collective of cats and two adult humans! They were none too happy when their living hot water bottles decided to start getting out of bed either. I don’t blame them. I’d have rather stayed in bed too, and I don’t doubt Lin would have minded either. Unfortunately, staying in the nice warm and cat covered bed was not an option.

And now I need to go make myself some coffee and put on some warmer clothing. Even with the furnace blasting, my pajamas are just not sufficient this morning. I had though about just crawling back into the still warm bed, but I really do need to get some things done today, though unless it warms up a lot later in the day, one of those things will not be going to the grocery store. I do not feel like puttering around outside in really cold weather. We have enough food to survive, and I am capable of living without Dr Pepper for at least a couple of days. I think. I haven’t tried to survive without it for a couple of days for a long time, but it’s too cold to be drinking cold soda anyway. Brrrr, and double brrrr.