A cold front, a huge blob of cold, meta-cold air, is drifting south out of Canada this evening. Wind chills are already in the double-digits below zero in most of the area, and I suspect that tomorrow will not be a nice day for going out, visiting, shopping, church, or most anything else. It will be forty degrees colder when I get up in the morning than it right now. You’d think I’d be used to such outrageous weather, but living in central Texas makes a body soft and whimpy. We don’t get this kind of weather in Waco. We often get triple-digit heat–nothing unusual there–but we never, ever, get double-digit temperatures below zero, windchill or otherwise. Oh, yes, we have the other extreme, but if you just stay out of the sun, the weather won’t kill you, no matter how hot it is. Here in the north, however, the wind howls, the house shakes, and frigid arctic air is barreling down on the midwest, making all of our lives just a little more interesting than we really need. Of course, I own good winter gear–a down coat, big gloves, boots, long underwear, a big woolly scarf, a down-filled hat–but I could always use more. I worry about the animals that have to stay outside. I’m sure they have burrowed in for the night, keeping a low, low profile with this ugly wind blowing. After living for twenty-plus years in Minnesota, you’d think I wouldn’t even notice such a thing. In the meantime, what is really surprising is how most people just go one with their lives as if nothing were out of the ordinary. I saw one lady at the gas station just now with no coat on. Post-script: it will warm up just fine by the end of the week.