It is currently that level of cold where the moisture from your breath will freeze your eyelashes to each other every time you blink so you have to try to time your blinking and breathing not to coincide - and that with a mask and multiple scarves over it to try to minimize freezing fog on the glasses.  That's not a tall tale or exaggeration, that's the level of cold it is outside in Wisconsin today.  (dog had to go outside,  she held off long as she could, to the point she started shaking at how long it took me to get out the door and nearly pooped inside.  Didn't but almost did....And since I'm single live alone with my fur babies in a second floor condo,  there's nobody to take my dog out but me.) 

Anyway,  eyelashes freezing together from the moisture of your breath whenever you breathe is a real temperature...it's even colder than contacts freezing to your eyeballs cold.... (I also have ridiculously long lashes, long enough that mascara on me looks like falsies on a normal girl. They constantly give butterfly kisses on anything I lay my head on including my own hand, they also sometimes will get tangled while sleeping which is annoying, and they got in the way using microscopes throughout my pre-med biochem days.)  So yeah, eyelashes freezing together from the moisture of your breath every time you breathe level cold.... 

The empirical temperature is currently -8F (uncertain what the windchill is but we have a windchill advisory til tomorrow afternoon.) It's actually only going to get colder from now til noon - and then a high of -1F around midafternoon before getting back down to -17F tonight/tomorrow morning.  So her sudden need to poop could have been worse timed than freezing eyelashes o'clock,  lol.  

Gonna go make me coffee and an omelette (carrot,  bell peppers, garlic, rosemary olive oil asiago cheese. Considering if I want to use up some of the last purple top turnips in it and/or if I want to balsamic glaze the veggies. Leaning toward a yes on both.) Then after brekkie, I'll clean out the old ashes before laying a new fire then read. (going to finish the three Carlene O'Connor Irish mystery novels I have - she's written more,  but these are the ones she had at Dublin Irishfest (in Dublin Ohio not Dublin proper) when I met her and she signed them.  So now I want to wait to buy the others from her directly have them signed.  Enjoyable murder mysteries,  nothing too special but enjoyable and humorous, and very authentically Irish culture. After that,  I plan to read the John Carter 11 book series.  They were mentioned in Lovecraft Country and as a kid my da warned me I wouldn't like them,  I'd just get angry at the casual racism and misogyny in Burroughs and especially the John Carter of Mars series.  But now as an adult,  I'm borrowing my da's vintage copies to read - still expecting I may get angry over casual racism and misogyny but knowing they're classics I want to have read at least once.)

 Later today at some point,  I'm planning to prep and cook up a slow cooker venison and cranberry wild rice stew of some sort and bake up some cornbread.  (I fucking LOVE good cornbread.  Probably don't want to get me started on how much I adore cornbread,  lol. Jalapeno cornbread is good, but honestly even just  standard basic cornbread is so delicious!!) and then at some point I intend to bake some cookies. (chocolate mint cookies - you use the chocolate cookie recipe on the back of the peanut butter chips bag but instead of the peanut butter chips you use Andes mint chips.  Chocolate peanut butter cookies are good, don't get me wrong - but the chocolate Andes mint cookies are even better!) Because if you're single and alone on Valentine's Day, then damnit you deserve to make yourself cookies! 

(I actually don't much care about Valentine's Day - I prefer gifts and love randomly as surprises over a socially mandated "show your partner you love them or you're a schmuck" day.  I like it to mean something,  and it doesn't if it's a have to. I've only had two Valentine's Days with a boyfriend, once in high school and the second time it was awkward because I was ready to break up but between Christmas,  New Year's,  his birthday (late Capricorn), and Valentine's Day there was no good time to do it and he wasn't getting it when I tried to bring it up gently - especially awkward timing since we bartended together....I broke up with him right before heading to the UK a couple weeks later.   O make it three Valentine's Day with boyfriends - but the third only technically counts since we weren't physically together though we were dating as he was on tour so he sent me roses but I didn't see him til he got back from tour. (I've dated a lot of musicians. When I was 20, I accidentally cursed myself by telling a musician friend that "O I'm not the sort of girl musicians date" (meaning not model-cheerleader-sorority girl type, just getting me to wear makeup is often a battle) and he told me I assume too much.  And ever since then,  every guy I've dated has been a musician and/or singer, no matter what context I met them in. So yeah.  There's that. So I'm actually quite used to touring musicians as boyfriends and me spending more nights alone than with them unless I join them for a leg of the tour. I mean,  it's not much of a curse given I love music and cult of celebrity doesn't impress me,  it's just a standing joke at this point that if Dani is dating someone the first question is, "So what does he play?") Anyway, I'm not the bitter pining upset over it type of single on Valentine's Day because I don't want just anyone and the day is not as meaningful to me as random expressions of love are, but hey any excuse to bake cookies!! 

Right now though.  Coffee and omelette time and then a fire in the hearth!  Ready go!