Things you can learn on one frigid day.

It’s once again the second week of January, albeit the last day, and therefore it is time to draw an OTB.

But since Jeremy has not sold calves yet, we are not yet dreaming of OTBs. Or, rather, we have such a large raft of options that it’s too hard to narrow it down before we know our income.

So I spent today learning things. To wit:

If you get out a tin of needles and four cigar boxes of thread, you can fix not only the shirt you set out to fix, but also three stuffed animals, one coat and a pillow.

If you have a pillow through the ticking of which someone (cough me) stuck their thumb, you will have down everywhere in very short order.

If you say, “Oh, I could wait to do laundry Monday,” but you have multiple teenagers in residence, you will almost certainly realize that there are sports clothes in the hamper and change your mind.

If you look out toward the cat feeding zone, currently the topmost story of the playset, you may find five or more bold bluejays fighting over what remains of the cat food.

If your husband’s tractor fuel gels in spite of cold-weather blend, plus Power Service, plus Power Service 911, to the point that you’d think blinking at it would set it on fire, but no, then you (cough he) can actually bucket- and bale-feed the herd of inexplicably psycho-touchy weaned calves by walking at quarter speed with only C calf (thus named because his mama lost her tag) going bananas.

If you can’t send the kids outside to run around the house their age plus some extra, you can let them rearrange the living room to whatever works for the day.

If you’re out of stretchy beading cord, butcher string works for pony beads (and Stephen Raichlen would be so proud).

If you say, “No, we have entirely too many sweets in the house right now,” the baker among the kids might volunteer to instead help with supper and then do it even though it’s peeling and grating potatoes.

If you pop out the door with a pitcher of warm water for the sleepy dog, you may find that she’s got very amusing frost on her eyelashes.

If you wonder why reduced circulation under the bed has resulted in a wall with condensation, you may discover that a knockoff space bag has reinflated itself to a very snug underbed fit and thusly has pinched off the air, so like it or not, you need to either disassemble the room to get to the bag or find a fan (cough found a fan).

If you have a slightly goldplated cat who’s accustomed to coming in the house from time to time, but who is temporarily barred from entry, and if he cannot get in by meowing at his usual door, he is not stupid, and he will find the other door to do his midnight meowing, even if that door is a foot from a sleeping human’s head (cough mine).

And last but not least, if you make seven thousand trips down the basement stairs for real and invented reasons such as to get the biggest griddle or to procure two adult beverages or to escape the chaos, you will not only be followed by at least one child with some urgent thing to impart, you will also find my four insect-control toads in the basement are still doing their job.

So really, it is warmer in Greenland than it is in Nebraska, but all’s right with the world.