Okay, So Maybe My January's Not So Bad After All

I took this from my friend Brandy's blog because I was just SO STRUCK by it.  Here I am whining 'bout our morning temps in the teens and Laura and her family were HAPPY that it was ONLY 20 degrees below zero where they were.

Kinda puts things in perspective for ya.

This little peek into life for the Ingalls family comes from Laura's book The Long Winter.  I had all the Little House books as a girl and I remember reading this one.  This winter just dragged on and on and on for them.  Blizzard after blizzard cover the town, their supplies run out and they end up having to send Manly out to find food or they'll starve.

Kinda makes me feel like I should just hush and enjoy my winter.

They never had central heat, they never had a pantry full of food, they never had electric blankets and I betcha five dollars they never had a Snuggie (I don't either but I'm trying to make a point here).  Yet they were HAPPY that it was ONLY 20 degrees below zero.

Maybe I'll dig that old book out and read it again.

Another thing I want to touch on is how aggravated I get when somebody asks me, "Is it cold enough for you?" Gah!!  I cannot stand that.

My new aggravation is "Where's all that global warming we've been hearing about?"  I've been hearing that a lot this month.  Nobody ever said that because of global warming, we'd never have cold weather again.  We're still going to have winters and we're still going to have summers. It's the long-term climate change that we need to be concerned with.  I'm not going to turn this into a political debate but I am gonna say that even if you don't believe global warming is real, surely you believe that the earth is real.  There are things we should do to protect it anyway, whether we believe global warming is real or not.  Conserving electricity and water, driving energy-efficient cars and composting and recycling whenever you can to reduce garbage going to landfills are just little things that can make a huge impact on the earth.  She's everybody's home, whether we be tree huggers or tree cutters.  She's the only home we have.