An odd experience

Note icicles hanging off the front of the Guppy. The snow did
start to melt yesterday.

I'm having trouble getting into a book I'm reading, Oscar and Lucinda. I'm not sure why. The writing is okay, and the underlying narrative is at least moderately interesting. I started it enough days ago that if I were breezing through it at my usual speed, I'd be done with it by now. Instead I haven't even made it to page 100 yet. For some reason, it's doing too good a job of mellowing me out when I crawl into bed.

My normal routine is to read for half an hour to an hour before going to sleep each evening. Seems like since we've been here at Montauk, that half an hour is more like 5 minutes. The only explanation that comes to mind is that dealing with the cold can be remarkably draining. We're staying warm, but there are a whole bunch of things that I tend to take for granted that involve extra work here. Because it's been so cold (well

The host's golf cart handles surprisingly well in snow. 

below freezing every night), we don't have the water connected to the Guppy. That means multiple trips throughout the course of the day to the frost-free faucet across the road (the one that would connect to the Guppy proved to be not frost-free after all and is frozen) to get water to make coffee, brush teeth, wash dishes, whatever. We hadn't planned on boondocking while sitting on a campground host's site so arrived here still in full winterization mode: the plumbing system was full of anti-freeze, not water.

I could be wrong, but it's one thing to go camping fully expecting to deal with "roughing it" and quite another to have it thrust upon one's self as a rude surprise. And, yes, my whining about being cold and inconvenienced definitely falls into the category of a first world problem. Somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa small children are trying to survive with no safe drinking water and praying UNICEF makes a food delivery soon while I whine about having to put on boots to walk to an outdoor faucet.

On the other hand, I bet those starving, thirsty kids are warm. . .

Photo taken before the snow started falling in earnest; by the time it stopped Saturday night there was probably 7 to 8 inches of fresh snow on top of what was already there. Yesterday temperatures hit the mid-30s and the snow started melting. It won't take long to vanish at this time of the year.