#19. or, it's fricken cold out

  It was cold yesterday, in the minus 40 degree Celsius range with the wind chill. So cold the school buses didn't run.  The bad thing about colder weather is that more problems come up with outside things. We had a cattle watering bowl freeze up. Sometimes it's just the float system on top and a pail of warm water will fix it up. When that doesn't work, you have to open it up and dig deeper. This one had a frozen hose underneath the bowl part plus a leak near the hose clamp.

  So, by the time you asses the situation, you already can't feel the tips of your fingers. We shut down the well, and i cut the hose. Sent my kid, who was home because the buses didn't run, for a screwdriver to loosen the clamp. Gave my knife to my kid and took the screwdriver and spent 5 minutes trying to get it onto the clamp which was at absolutely the worst angle possible. Finally got the clamp off, then needed to cut off the remaining piece of hose that was under the clamp. Checked all my pockets, couldn't find my knife, fingers are now cold and wet from the leaking hose that i can't feel them at all. Discover that i need to pee. Decide against exposing my tender man-bits to the extreme temperature. Need to warm up while my brother goes to the shop for another knife. Go into the barn and try to run warm water onto my fingers to get the feeling back and remember that the well is shut down and no water is going to come. Fingers are too numb to manage my zipper to pee so head back to the watering bowl. Find my kid standing there with the first knife i had handed to him. Get everything back together and discover that the small propane torch we brought to thaw the hose won't work properly because it is also starting to freeze up. While my brother goes to turn the well back on, i try to thaw the frozen hose with sporadic blasts of flame from the frozen torch. Finally get a trickle of water, then full pressure, gather up the tools, head to shop and discover we lost the second knife, which we didn't actually need, somewhere on the way.

  ....................it's even colder this morning, i'm going to pee before i start anything.