SO COLD!!

Today, 12/31 - New Year's Eve Day, was quiet, especially considering the huge event on Christmas Eve the week before. This is the coldest day of the year to date, and we certainly felt it.

As usual, we were to spend the first 2 hours inside with the ladies of W.O.W. Running late, I called Tilllie to give her a heads up and found her usually boisterous self on the other end of the phone, weak and really feeling under the weather. I convinced her to stay home and rest, so when I arrived, several ladies were waiting outside the room waiting for our usual fearless leader, Miss Tilllie to come. We found our way in, and had a toast to the New Year with sparkling apple cider and sparkling grape juice.

The conversation turned to all the personal items the ladies lose on a regular basis - our yarn and crochet needles for sure, bras, toiletries, all kinds of things get confiscated and thrown away. Really? I can understand the remote possibility of an aluminum crochet hook being sharpened into a dangerous object, but a bra? Come on. These women have every obstacle beyond our imagination to navigate. Really, is it necessary add this to the burden? So cold!

One reason our time is up at 11:00 inside the building called the Lodestar Day Resource Center (the LDRC) is because they close up the building between 11:00 am and 1:00 pm. Certainly there must be rationale for this, but on a day like today - it is cruel to shove everyone out the door into this severe weather. So cold!

So, once our time inside was done, I moved outside and sat with a faithful knitter, Lisa Takata. We talked with a resident, Jackie. I'm going to admit it, the whole time, I'm trying to knit with gloves on (not so successful), and thinking how nice it would be to just get in my car, crank up the heat and go home. But both Lisa and I knew that just was not going to happen. For Jackie, her next relief was to get into the LDRC, the least we could do is to wait out those 2 freezing hours with her. I'm telling you - IT WAS SO COLD!

That evening, I put an extra blanket down for my dogs (inside, mind you), and put covers over my garden because of the extreme cold. I thought about my time with Jackie earlier that day and came to the disturbing realization that my dogs have more comfort than Jackie does tonight. 

Here are the new hats for today:

Jackie holding a hat made by Susan

Ann

Ann