A Mountain Man's Breaking Point

It is currently five whole degrees, with about a twenty-mile-an-hour wind. The windchill is something like 20 degrees below zero.

Inhospitable, to say the least.

I knew it was going to be awful today, and that it would be an inside playing day for the children. I knew it, though I was not enthused about it.

However, when Cubby and Charlie got up and saw the inch of snow on the ground, they were insistent that they wanted to go outside. I tried to explain about windchill and how it was much colder outside than it looked. Cubby said he would wear all his outdoor clothes. I told him that the cold with this kind of wind was actually dangerous and that he wouldn't be able to stay out for any significant period of time without serious discomfort. He insisted that he loves the cold and wanted to go out.

So I let them*.

We spent a good five minutes putting on every piece of outdoor apparel they own, making sure their coats were zipped all the way up and that their snow pants were tucked down into their boots. Then out the door they went.

Literally eight minutes later, I heard them come crashing back into the front hall. When I went in there to help Charlie shed his snow stuff, Cubby looked stunned and asked, "How cold is it outside again?" Followed by a dramatic, "Get me by the woodstove! My hands are freezing!"

Told you so. But at least I got those eight minutes.

* This is solely because everyone else was still asleep, leaving me the only arbitrator of the heating-vent disputes that had been occurring continuously for an hour already. Sure, kids, go outside! At least I'll get five minutes of quiet! Totally worth a frost-bitten nose! (Joke. Obviously.)