It finally warmed up to minus 2 by 11 am this morning, but I am so stiff I can barely move a muscle. The dogs and I huddled together shivering in unison for the entire night. I kept pulling blankets over both dogs trying to relieve their plight, but warmth simply wouldn't come. One blanket kept shooting electric sparks each time one of the dogs moved, but their shivering was so violent that the electric show continued on for hour after hour.
Nursing a blinding migraine, and feeling sick to my stomach I kept drifting in and out of sleep without any comfort or peace. You can become so cold that you start to hyperventilate, breathing becomes very difficult. And you start to feel warm. Your limbs can be ice cold, yet you start to feel warm.
Shivering may be natures way of stopping hypothermia take over, of generating warmth, but shivering exhausts and weakens the body. Your muscles start to feel as though you have had an almost cruel degree of physical exercise, and they start to cease up. It didn't take long before I felt as though I had run a 40 mile race and then tried to climb Mount Everest.
I don't think I have ever lived through such a long period of dangerously frigid temperatures before in my life, not even while in the safety and comfort of a home, so trying to survive this while sat in a cold shed is becoming a serious challenge.
Trying to move the truck today was going to be fruitless. Already working on 5 or less cylinders I dare not risk doing further damage by trying to start it in below freezing temperatures, and with 14 inches or more inches of snow on the truck, and compacted ice and snow on the road it would have been incredibly dangerous to try and get to plowed roads.
So for today I am going to have to wait this one out like everyone else. Yet waiting it out is so painful, so devastatingly painful. Minus -10 by 7 pm, minus -15 by 8 pm, heading towards minus -20 in the next few hours, that I'm unsure how to find relief from these arctic conditions.
Why does a career criminal like Robert Huckins have a warm comfortable home? I just don't GET IT.
Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly if they even roll a few more upon it. ~ Albert Schweitzer
When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. ~Franklin D. Roosevelt
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