The Winter Solstice may not yet have arrived, but you mightn't know it from our current temperatures. Years ago, minus-20-degree weather would never have kept us from our daily ramble in the woods. But yesterday's minus-16-degrees with a brutal wind certainly did. Although we had only very light flurries intermittently, the gusting winds carried previous days' snow off rooftops and created white-outs as the sparkling crystals flew through the air like a school of minuscule fish spontaneously turning into a submissive white veil.

We did go out, but only to do the food shopping. And that turned out to be no picnic. Even traversing the short distance from where the car was parked to the entrance of the supermarket was a challenge, the wind ripping through the atmosphere that was itself icy-frigid. It made one -- me, in any event -- think of summiting Mount Everest.

Every time we took Jackie and Jillie out to the backyard, they turned into tiny lunatics, racing about madly, challenging one another to footsie duels, wrestling and trying to make up for our not taking them out for a ravine walk, yesterday. That lasted until they were suddenly overtaken by the realization that this cold combined with the fact that they kept racing off the shovelled pathway into deep snow, or something, made their tiny paws hurt, and they weren't able to raise them all simultaneously for relief.

The temperature plunged to minus-26 overnight, but the wind subsided. This morning when they were first taken out, it was minus-21, anything but balmy, yet tolerable without the wind. Last night, when we settled into bed, my husband realized that I'd changed the duvet from the fall one to the winter one, and the bedsheets from flannel to the much warmer fleece sets. And we were extraordinarily comfortable and comforted.

This morning, the usual discussion took place about preferences for a baked goody, and I offered, date squares, lemon cupcakes, raisin pie, or Chelsea buns. My husband's face lit up, asking if it wouldn't be too much trouble to produce Chelsea buns. So Chelsea buns it is.