It was a cold New Year’s Day. Like 1 degree early this morning. I drove around in the truck with the kids and took pictures. I bought them chocolate donuts and juice at Valley Market to keep them happy.

A little later, at home, when it was about 8 degrees, we lost track of Della. I noticed the back door was open. Soon, Della was walking back toward the house with a bleeding tongue. She had stuck her tongue to a pole on the north side of the house. She said that she looked, and a little bit of tongue skin got left behind. We checked later, and she was right. We asked her if she learned this from A Christmas Story. She said yes. I said, why would you do that, you saw how that turned out. She said the thing was she couldn’t remember what happened in the movie.