It was 46 degrees when I got up this morning. We keep the furnace set at 68 overnight as we like it cool when we sleep. When I get up, I turn the furnace up, as well as the fireplace to warm things up. Normally it warms up within 10 minutes or so. Around 7:15 I asked Dean if he wanted to walk. I'm not sure either one of us really wanted to, but we changed our clothes and headed to the car. I didn't realize it had rained, but it definitely had. It felt cool outside, but we continued our drive to the park. When we saw the flag flapping towards the south, we looked at each other, shook our heads, and left! Yes, we are wimps! With the wind it would have felt much colder there on the bluff than back at the RV Park.
When we returned I made our morning shakes, did the dishes, made the bed and set down to finish the Wed/Thurs blog post. It was a busy two days so the blog was set aside quite a bit. I noticed the temps had dropped to 40 when we returned. (At 3:30pm it had only reached 45).
Dean left to go to the garage about 10. I read the blogs that I follow and commented on a couple, before starting to work on my blog post for today. So far today, I've been a bit lazy, but don't feel too bad about it since I have nothing pressing to do.
Dean returned for lunch at noon. I heard him pull in, so I started pulling things out of the refrigerator to make lunch. Yesterday I bought a tub of Raspberry Chipotle Dip at Sam's. I highly recommend it - it is delicious! Very creamy - and is great with crackers and veggies.
I mixed up some hummingbird syrup - using 1/4 c sugar and 4 parts water. It is supposed to be sunny tomorrow with a high of 65, so we will put the feeder outside a window we can both enjoy watching. We loved watching the hummers at our sticks and bricks.
Dean told me he was pretty sure he heard a turkey at the lot the other day, as well as some owls. I am looking forward to being there to enjoy them too. Besides the iris', there is something else very similar to iris foliage. I'm not sure what it is, but it's soft and thick. Something has been laying in the middle of it. It is something fairly large for the amount of foliage that is flat on the ground. We wonder if it might be a deer. I told Dean we should get a field camera so we can see what animals show up there.
I watched a little TV this afternoon, but found it hard to stay with it. It was so cold today I didn't even open the blinds. It was just not warming up inside as much as I wanted it to.
Our thermostat is on the wall as you go up the stairs, so when it gets warm upstairs the furnace shuts off and it is still cool in the living area. I put a fan on the dresser in the bedroom, pointed it about 2/3's of the way towards the ceiling (it swivels up) and within an hour we were actually feeling somewhat comfortable downstairs. I've put the fan on the floor in the living room before to move the air around, but this worked better to move that warm air downstairs.
The floor of the slide where our chairs and desk are located gets so cold. I have a little knee pad I used when pulling weeds from our flower bed. I put it on the floor with my feet on it. It helps some, but when it dips into the 30's it's hard to get this area warmed up. I noticed my friend Patsy talked about this same issue. I asked her what tips she had found to help and I'm going to give them a try for next year. Our weather forecast for tomorrow and Sunday show highs of 64 and 66, with the remainder of the month being in the 70's.
It was about 2 when Dean left for the garage, but he returned a couple of hours later. It was just too cold to be outside or even in the garage very long today.
We decided to use the last of our polish sausage I bought at Aguilar's Meat Market in Mission, TX. I sauted them in a small frying pan--it was too cold to grill. We had a few chips with it. I bought some sauerkraut so I will enjoy that on mine, as Dean does not care for it. As I was cooking the sausage, the fire on the stove went out. Dean had to go out and switch the propane tank over. I'm glad it happened now and not in the middle of the night.
I'm thankful the weather is taking a turn towards warmer temperatures, and I pray all of you are able to enjoy it very soon as well.
Maybe Dean knows this, but as long as you leave both propane tanks on, they will switch over automatically when one runs dry. There should be a little red flag in the regulator window that pops up when the one runs dry, at that time flip the small handle on the regulator to point at the full tank, the red flag should disappear. Take the empty tank and fill it, put it back on and open the valve, just keep repeating the process each time a tank runs dry.
ReplyDeleteHi Cheri. You are dealing with the same issues we have. Do you have a door that you can close to the upstairs during the daytime? It makes a HUGE difference when you are in the living room. Granted, it is cold up there but for only quick in and outs up there, it works great. We did put a small electric heater in the bathroom with the door closed set on low and it keeps it moderate for when we use it. In the evening, around 8 pm, we open the door halfway to allow heat to go up from our heaters. Mind you, this is all using the fireplace, our blue flame heater and our infra red heater and not our furnace. We also cover our vents with placemats downstairs when the furnace isn't in use. It isn't supposed to happen but cool air does find its way in through those.
ReplyDeleteStay warm! I do feel comforted that we aren't the only ones dealing with this kind of stuff right now. If you had to stay home a winter, what would you do?
We have shut off the bedroom before and it does work pretty good. The fan on the dresser also worked pretty good, but nothing really makes it totally comfortable when it's in the 30's (or worse, below 30).
DeleteI'm not sure what we would do if we were here during the winter. Dean mentioned getting some type of skirting around the entire rig. We go through the propane like crazy with the mild winters we have - I can't imagine if we had to go through temperatures 10 degrees or more below freezing for any length of time. We've talked about one of the heaters you have (blue frame or infra red) but it would sure cut our floor space down. You said you cover your vents with placemats - during the winter, or summer? We've talked about covering ours through the summer but never discussed doing that during the winter.