Below Zero

Greetings from beautiful Wisconsin! Right now we have plenty of snow on the ground, a bunch of dirty snow on the roads, and mountains of snow surrounding all parking lots and driveways! (Last night when I was shoveling the driveway I was having a little trouble finding anywhere to put the snow I scooped up. We surrounded our driveway pretty good when we were shoveling from the last few snowfalls.)

More good news is that we seem to be headed for a heat wave. Today our high temperature is expected to be 10 degrees Fahrenheit. To many of you, this may not seem warm at all. However, when you've been experiencing temperatures well below zero for the past several days, 10 degrees Fahrenheit feels downright balmy. Honest to goodness! It's 20-30 degrees warmer, and you can definitely tell. The first year we lived in Wisconsin, we had a week of subzero temperatures. Then one day I opened the back door and I felt a distinct warmth in the air. It was 22 degrees! Hooray! Yes, I really did feel warmth in the air. Call me crazy, but I really did.

My friends in Oklahoma give me strange looks when I try to explain this phenomenon to them. They think anything below about 50 is chilly. Since moving to Wisconsin, I have learned that anything above 20 is warm. Anything above 40 is really warm. Anything above 70 is hot.

But we could contrast this to the time we went camping in Oklahoma in July and temperatures were well over 110 during the day. We always felt great relief when it cooled off in the evenings...to the low 90's. I had never before thought 90 degrees would feel cool.

And frankly, it didn't. But it was a heckuva lot better than 117.