Colder still.

I wake up nice and toasty for a change, the wind having died down and the sun shining warmly overhead when I let the dogs out and discard a good three layers of clothes until only my pjs are left.

Pleased with the warm temperatures, I calmly go through the morning rituals digging through my closet and find that I don’t have pants to wear now that I’ve brought my laundry down yesterday.
Scowling at the meager pickings, a light bulb goes off in my head when I walk past my storage chest. If my memory serves me right, there are still several jeans that I haven’t managed to squeeze into for six years at least.

Warily I dig through the mess, until right there on the bottom the plastic back shows the outline of the familiar jeans design. Three pairs, no less, and after taking them out, examining the size somewhat doubtfully, I toss them on the bed and try them out.

Success! They fit perfectly, and are even loose around the legs. That is something short of a miracle, to say the least. So, dressed in the new-old jeans I head on down to the house, for once wearing only two layers, with my vest hooked around my bag, just in case.

What with all the activities going on these past two weeks, I’ve decided to take another rest day (workout-wise) and head on over to the laundry to get part of yesterday’s batch inside. By the time I get the basket with the wet pile outside and hang about half of it, it hits me: Right in the center of my face!

A breath taking wall of cold, slamming in place and eradicating every hint of warmth as clear white mist streams out with my breath. Oh. My. God! It’s like “The sixth sense”, or something. In all the twelve years that we’ve lived in Spain, I have never felt my lungs hurt with the cold. It’s literally astonishing. Like there was a temperature drop of a good ten degrees in just seconds.

Feeling it inside too, big brother closes the heavy curtain in front of the open door and starts lighting the heaters, by the time I hurry on inside, the dogs eagerly coming in my pursuit, since they’ve obviously felt it too.

I’m not feeling my best today. Somehow my mood has drastically changed in the hour that has passed since I woke up, and when big brother and I settle down to work on the computer, it’s all I can do to work on the editing job.

We hash through the notes he’s made, while I struggle with my incapability of dealing with criticism today. Most of the time I can handle it well enough by ignoring big brother’s occasional sigh of frustration at some scene where his reading got blocked to some error he can’t locate. But not today, with chilling cold penetrating my legs right through my jeans. Each sigh, grunt and shake of his head makes me want to shove my computer off the table, before stomping off.

It’s one of those “everything sucks” moods, for sure. I can’t focus on editing; every change feels like a major disaster–even though I try not to show this, of course–and by the time we reach the last chapter I’m pretty much chomping at the bit to get the heck away from my computer, lest I do something drastic.

Explaining the problem to big brother, I head to the kitchen and start on dinner instead. I know better than to work on editing when I’m in this particular mood, but of course I didn’t want to disappoint big brother, who feels an urge to get the story done for sending it to the publisher ASAP.
With a little luck we’ll manage more tomorrow, but I’m not holding my breath. These moods tend to linger.

Looking through our supplies, I decide on baked potatoes with carrots and cauliflower on the side. While pealing the potatoes, grandpa is making himself useful, cleaning up kitchen appliances which I intend to put in one of the empty drawers, and by the time dinner’s done, they’re all neatly set on the counter, waiting for me to put away.

Dinner goes down well enough, even though my mood hasn’t improved yet. My attitude towards the food matches the one I had towards writing today, so it tastes both bland and too potent at the same time. I know, it’s impossible, but it’s really the only way to describe it.

Not feeling up to wasting any time in front of the TV, I stay in the kitchen and get to work on cleaning up and putting appliance away in one of the smaller drawers.
Miraculously it fits…but then, considering that the smaller drawers are twice the size of any normal drawer, it really is no big surprise.

Cleaning up the rest, I prepare for the continuation of the remodeling project. The old china cupboard needs to be removed, and cups, glasses and plates get carefully placed in the corner of the section of the old kitchen that is still standing. One by one the sibs join me, the sisters returning to their sanding and painting while big brother and I start tearing away the old cupboard and end up literally tearing it off the wall when it becomes clear that the old attachments are no longer useable.

Clearing the wall with a certain sense of victory we continue by hanging the top cupboards. 5 layers of paint are visible in the cleared section.
The biggest one goes up first. A stretch of 144 cm is attached to the brick wall and the wooden beam of the second floor, when we realize that it’s crooked. After a quick examination, it turns out that the beam overhead is slightly bent, requiring some adjustments to the attachment we’ve just made.

In the meanwhile, little sister has painted the last drawer cover and has started on varnishing the oak bar that stretches over the raised section in the center, and the pedestals on which the faucets stand, making the wood gleam prettily as we try not to get any mess on it.

The second cupboard follows soon thereafter, before little sister and I start preparing the back of the cupboard for fastening, and big brother sees to the crooked problem.
There’s some debate as to how we will attach the whole, but in the end some heavy bolts into the top of the casing, keep it nicely in place.

Middle sister is still sanding by that time, going through the last of the painted backs that got treated yesterday.
I pretty much play “hold-it-steady” while little sister drills hole after hole and starts putting in screws for when big brother declares the main cupboard ready for back-attachment.

With little sister climbing on top of the counter to use the heavy drill-the battery charged one is out of power, again–on the board that fits perfectly on the frame that awaits it.

The third, and last, cupboard will need a support, so while I help middle sister with the back of the squat casing, big brother cuts out a triangle that is going to support it in the air.
It takes us a solid hour to finally attach the last one, the sisters adding the final touches of paint before we finally step back to admire the latest almost-finished part of the kitchen.

Just a few more suspension additions and we’ll be able to put away all that the old kitchen is still hiding.
We’re all, once again, pretty much pooped by the time midnight arrives and rapidly go through our habitual cleanup. No one is feeling too perky mentally, for some reason, and after a quick snack of crackers with cheese I head on up for my quarters.

The cold astounds me. I think this is the worst temperature we’ve had since we moved here when I enter my living room and see that the thermometer is showing the God-awful temperature of four degrees, with outside being even colder.
Hardly able to believe it I quickly feed my dogs and than start pulling on even more layers than I usually do.

As the cold settles into my body, a sweater is added to two and the vest I’m already wearing. Along with two pairs of sock and fur-lined house shoes that just barely keep the cold floor from chilling my feet as I move around the cabin, hurrying through finding more blankets that I’ll need to get through the night.

Luckily I find another one in the metal chest under my bed, and am most pleased when I realize it’s made of old fashioned wool rather than synthetics, which aught to work a lot better. After I’ve washed my hands I start to really fret, ‘cause my hands literally freeze up, hurting as if I’ve just cleaned out the freezer, as I dig through my drawers in search of gloves.

The knitted ones really don’t help at all, I find after little more than thirty minutes, and start digging again until I locate a leather pair, padded thickly that finally do the job. Though sitting out here, freezing while writing the Blog (with more use of the backspace than actual keys) I’m dreading the coming night just a little. Poor doggies, too, since there really isn’t enough room to accommodate more than six of them on the bed.