It's been cold lately. That may be the understatement of the year. Some sources are saying the latest cold snap is one of the most severe in years, but I think it's just part of living here in January. Luckily, I still have an adequate supply of firewood stacked up for the stove. However, I would have spent more time cutting wood if I had known it was going to turn out to be this cold.

In fact, it was so cold last week that when I carried in a few logs from outside and put them in the stove the fire nearly froze to death. Why, I noticed that even the sun was wearing a hat and mittens.

Despite a little snow on Monday and Tuesday, we've still not seen very much in the way of wintry precipitation this season. It's been so long since we had a more than an inch or two of snow that I'm not sure if we'd know what to do if one really fell. Off the top of my head, I can remember two ‘noticeable' snows in November and now two or three in January, but not much more than that. Being a snow lover, I'd really like to see about a foot at least once this year, but I'd settle for something that lasted longer than half a day and was at least deep enough to cover the grass. That's a bit more of a feat in my yard, which wasn't really mowed much after early October.

In thinking back, we had ample warning of a colder winter.

As I said in the fall, all the old-time signs were there, like the heavy harvest of apples in several years and other darker—and fewer—woolly worms than in recent years.

Even with the unusually cold weather, we've still had our share of breaks from the chills. Now the forecast is calling for more temperatures in the upper 40s this week.

About two weeks ago we had a string of what turned out to be a really nice days, the first with weather like that that we'd had in quite some time.

Since it's been even colder since that last reprieve, I'd say the forecast for later this week will drive everyone outside to enjoy the ‘heat wave.'

I joked with a friend at the grocery store the other day that a day at 32 is really a heat wave compared to the single digits we've had a few times. No wonder the upper 40s feels like T-shirt weather.

Some folks are reading this in more tropical locales right now and thinking I'm insane.

With several commitments already on my plate and a few unexpected ones coming my way as of late, I've been doing most of my work inside lately while casting longing glances out the window from time to time.

That's one of the things I both like and don't like about working inside. When the weather breaks, there's no feeling quite like spending a day out-of-doors. Then again, I always have these miserable snowy, freezing and windy days to be thankful that I'm stationed in a nice warm building instead of in a house under construction somewhere.

Sometimes that's the most time I get to spend outside is traveling to and from the car somewhere. I'd like to spend more time walking and just being outside, but I may have waited too long and fallen prey to my own creature comforts of climate control and laziness.

To help that problem, I've started using an exercise machine at the house to get at least a little bit of activity. I've been riding it for about 25 minutes most days just to keep my body from thinking I've already died. I decided to start that after realizing that the closest I was to exercise in the entire month of December was carrying firewood to the porch and then carrying a few sticks at a time into the house. While filling up the porch with half a cord or so can be a chore, the other hardly qualifies as exercise.

I'm still considering my earlier notion to take up swimming or some other form of daily exercise. As of right now, my target date is early February for that effort, which should give me at least two or three months to make excuses as to why I've bought a Wellness Center membership and still find myself unable to go exercise.

Maybe I should think more positively, but I do have my reasons for thinking this way.

But from my brief attempts on the elliptical trainer, which is the name of the machine that I've been riding for about a week now, I had already decided that I might want to reconsider even before getting started. When just a 25-minute ride leaves one sweaty and breathless, it's questionable whether I'd be willing to do more even if I had a membership to the best gym on earth.

The sad part is that I was really pleased with myself to have been able to finish even that brief workout. I thought of having my photo taken with the machine and awarding myself a large trophy, but thought better of it.

However, those feelings had definitely changes by the next day. "Even the children can probably go faster and further than me," I complained the next day when I awakened with sore calves and even less motivation than the day before. It was at that moment that I wondered if I should just grow fat and old and forget about it.

However, the night before I had seen a show about overweight people on television and even they were able to do more than I was doing. One man, morbidly obese and much older than me, had worked out for hours per day. I just couldn't see myself giving up after just one day of exercise when people over twice my weight were doing 10 times as much. Perhaps complaining is one of the strong suits of people with sore muscles and a lack of motivation, I thought.

So I got back on the machine later that day and rode it anyway. It definitely requires more exertion than rocking back and forth at a desk chair or wiggling one's fingers on a keyboard. But it isn't as hard as cutting wood all day, construction work, running a marathon or motivating a lazy person to work out. That last one is probably the most difficult, especially when I'm the lazy person. I should know.
 

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