I hate to write about the cold weather, because that is all that we have been hearing about and living with for the past few days. If the forecasters are correct, by the time you read this, it should have mellowed a bit and be more normal winter weather, at least for the short-term.
I can remember one cold weekend many years past. I wish I could cite the date and year. However, it was a year that Shawano County 4-H held the drama festival at the Wittenberg High School. That cold came in earlier than the Saturday of the festival, but it was cold.
In those years the clubs were active in drama, and there would be enough plays for the event to last all day. I can recall that my club, Tiger Tribe 4-H, had a play or two to perform and that we spent the day at the festival. When it was over, no one was anxious to leave, as we knew how cold it would be outside and we were not sure if our vehicle would even start for us to go home. As I recall, some had problems, but I was able to go home on schedule.
That was also the weekend that a skunk decided to come by the house and die outside of our bedroom window. When a skunk is that close, the smell is so bad, but we weren’t sure as to what it was until my husband spread a load of manure in the field south of our house. It was then that he saw it flopping around.
I made some phone calls as to what to do, and the advice was to shoot it and haul it away where no farm animals could get to it. Next I had to call to find someone to shoot it. Then farmer husband used the loader to pick it up and haul it far back into the woods.
I wish getting rid of the odor was as quick of a solution. The perfume of skunk had permeated into the house; the clothes smelled, even those in the closets. When my kids got on the bus, someone said, “Oooohhhh, skunk.”
Months later, when spring eventually arrived, the odor was still in the air. Every time it rained the house would be filled with that sickening smell. I burned a lot of candles that year.
I guess I will always associate extreme cold with that weekend of 4-H plays and a dead skunk.
Meanwhile, back to the real world, I escaped the worst of the cold spell in 2014 with no frozen pipes, but one day my van would not start. That was no problem; it worked when it needed to.
The nearly three days that I stayed home, I got a lot of work done. One job I do this time of year is to put last year’s columns into a scrapbook. That always takes longer than it should, because I find myself reading about my life in 2013. It is amazing how quickly I forget the things that happened in these past few months.
Another job accomplished is organizing for figuring out my income taxes. It is only January, I have never done that this early before. However, as usual I have misplaced a few things, so I will be searching paper piles.
As each week goes into the next, us Wisconsinites will keep putting one foot in front of the other, facing the weather, come what may.
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