O.k. this is nuts. The 10" of snow melted within 36 hours, it warmed to 50 degrees, we hardly needed a fire. The sun was beaming in the windows. Then it started getting cloudy. Big clouds over the lake that they were showing on the news. A little hard to see, but believe me, they were dark and heavy hanging there over the lake!

The winds picked up and the temperatures started dropping. I could see the trees bending in the wind outside. I ran out to close up the barn door around dinner time. It was razor sharp cold winds. Tom came home and told me that a huge tree had fallen up the road and made it impassable so he had to back track and take the next road down and work his way up. He stopped before our driveway to move branches in the road. That must have been what took down our phone line and our Internet! Still, no snow but getting colder. Tommy was outside on the porch when he actually saw the trees blow over. They were "breathing" then over it toppled. Over time, it was a domino effect and the first slowly pushed the rest of the pine standing there over. Five in all. And we can't even use the wood to burn! As if the muddy mess of toppled trees wasn't enough excitement, we awoke to 3" of snow back on the ground. They promise it will stay very cold for the rest of the week. Oh , joy!

Wednesday morning the phone lines were still down, Tom called from work. Jessalyn missed all her morning classes and will have to charge ahead full steam to catch up. Nasty outside, puttering put aside, boredom overtook us. I resorted to childish entertainment for 1/2 hour but that is all I could take before I went back and picked up sewing.

Thomas was dying with anticipation for his Jim Henson book Tale of Sand to come UPS. He is still waiting for a call from the nursing home. Cabin fever is setting in!

About 1:00 the phone company finally came and fixed the lines. Just in time for Jessalyn to miss ALL the classes for the day. It is cold this morning and if old tales are true, the sky doesn't promise well for today.

We lit the pilot last night and had it on for 5 hours last night before I got up at 4 a.m. to turn the pilot back off and try to start a fire with the small amount of wet wood we have and the bad of coal we have to try. It is burning now, but even the coal isn't as warm as the wood. Maybe I'm not doing it right, but the blower isn't giving off much in the way of heat. Maybe I'm just spoiled!