Oh, Myrtle Mae, It's Cold

The mercury catapulted to a high of 3 degrees today but with the wind chill it felt like -17 degrees. I did not go out at all. I opened the door into the garage from the kitchen to throw away my banana peel after breakfast and that was it. You can see how cold it is by the condition of the birdbath. You can barely see open water right next to the heater. It's what we call bitter cold and it isn't supposed to warm up into the double digits for a few days. Brr. I want to make another batch of soup but don't have the ingredients and I don't really want to go out tomorrow. But if I get a doc's appointment to get a GI referral tomorrow I'll swing by the store and load up on soup makings.

In honor of the winter wonderland that arrived on Friday here's the coolest looking snow drift I've ever seen. It's at the end of the retaining wall where I suppose the wind was able to sneak through the fence boards or maybe the wind whipped over the top of the fence to bend the snow over like that. Anyway, isn't it pretty?

I have icicles across the front of the garage. Okay, I confess, I took this picture yesterday when it was nearly 20 degrees outside but I still have the icicles and I still think they look cool.

I took this picture of a Sparrow this afternoon. It's hard to see the bird because it's in the shade and it's flying so it's basically a brown blur. Somehow this might be one of my favorite bird pictures.

Since I essentially left home right after the first meeting of my Novel Writing Critique group on Wednesday, I spent this afternoon going over the comments from my group-mates, incorporating some of them into a copy of the chapter, and preparing and submitting my next ten pages. 

 

After supper I pulled out my sketchbook and 20 Ways to Draw a Tree and scribbled down these six figures. I'm trying to be more relaxed when I'm drawing. I can't tell if it's working or not.

 

The amazing thing is that even though I spent hours sitting here I didn't get cramps in my legs which I have gotten for months. I also wasn't awakened by leg cramps in the night. I'm so thankful that I went to the cardiologist on Wednesday and he ordered a blood test. I truly think he saved my life.

--Barbara