January 2026 - Deep Freeze

It's another new year here. The Holidays are over, the seasonal ornaments area all put away and now we're getting ready for another deep freeze with subzero temperatures. Out of necessity and safety, most of our Dog walks were all indoors this month, (i.e. malls, warehouse and club membership stores). Sven developed a blister on his foot which limited some of our outings until it healed up.

Not too much going on for us this month, I long ago made it a personal rule to never schedule medical appointments in Jan & Feb, or July & Aug. unless absolutely necessary the weather is just too extreme and unpredictable and just makes it unsafe to be out and about.

We received over 26 inches of blowing snow during one storm and were out so the dog could pee in -14f wind chill temps. The weather got to me at one point, between trying to breathe in the cold, shovel out the car, take the trash out and walk with all that sunlight off the snow, I had a bit of a fainting spell which was a different than my usual migraine & vertigo episodes. I had to sit in the car for a bit before being able to get myself back indoors. Seem to be fine now, something to watch out for next time.

We got dealt a curve ball when we had to wait around for property maintenance to shovel out our building's doors (front and back) and learned this the hard way when we realized we were trapped for hours when the doors wouldn't open up at all. While we understand conditions can be tough in a storm, it was rather quite unsettling to know we could NOT get out in a fire - other than having to break a window in that scenario. Sven held his wee for over 18 hrs. I tried to get him to pee in the shower, (easiest spot to clean up afterwards) but he simply refused to do so he knows that's bath time not wee spot. Poor guy. Alas, snow shovelers and volunteers came to the rescue, and we got outside just as things were getting dicey for Sven. Phew. I guess the morale of that story is we'll know better for next time to monitor the doors ever few hours ourselves and keep shoveling the snow away so that it doesn't become blocked.

We did manage an outing with Grammy at Panera Bread this month as well.

Pictures below.