Oh for a nose cozy!

A quick glance at the NOAA web site for our town this morning greets me with the cheery news that sometime this week the outdoor temperature will climb all the way up to freezing. Last week, when I was finishing one class, starting another, working as an assistant on a mediation visit through the diocese, and with Tom working at the train show at the Big E in Springfield, I was left as sole morning stroller for Dover in the close-to-zero weather and the well below zero wind chill. One morning I counted that I had on 19 pieces of clothing, and since my face was feeling the weather, I ruefully regretted not adding a 20th, an extra scarf.


Each Christmas vacation, decades ago, we trekked to Minnesota with our small children. Minnesota - where Tom grew up, where my daughter and her family now live and where the kids don't know what a snow day is - the local inhabitants would think zero was child's play in the overall economy of winter endurance. 


One memorable Christmas, maybe even the one when I broke my knee skating, one of my then teen-age sisters-in-law knit my father-in-law a nose cozy. I thought desirously of this piece of outer wear last week as Dover and I crunched along in the new snow bitter cold, feeling keenly the cold wind on my one remaining exposed body part.

GrandDog Random asks to come in from the cold.