Bitter, Bitter Cold

Times like this, I am sooo jealous of our friend Carey's wood-burning stove. And we don't even have (today at least) the sub-zero temps they have north of us. It's above zero, barely, now.
Until lately, I nodded and smiled when people said, "Keep warm!" because, well, isn't that a DUH? We have a house, four walls and a roof, and a functional heating system. So by keeping warm, you basically mean stay inside, right?
Turns out you have no idea how many drafts your house has until the breeze coming through them is sub-zero. My toes, frost-nipped in junior high, have been hurting for two or three days straight. That's INSIDE in socks and shoes. I have blocked a drafty window in the family room with a rolled-up garbage bag along the sill. Husband has taped a garbage bag over the kitchen window through which there REALLY WAS a breeze. This morning we shut a blanket in the doorway of the laundry room, which is uninsulated and unheated (yes, I've been tossing a coat on to do laundry) and it seems the doorway from it into the living room does not shut entirely. Funny the things you notice when it's exactly 2 degrees outside. Husband and I are now sleeping in the family room, where the heaters work the best of all. And we have a FROZEN PIPE. The hot water pipe (of all pipes, that one) in the kitchen is frozen solid. Husband is hoping to put heating tape around all pipes to which he can find access when he gets home from work tonight, which will be after 8 p.m. because of church tonight. Vespers for St. Anthony's Day tomorrow. I really wonder who will show, honestly. WE'LL be there, because we live ten minutes away and we're just crazy like that. And the verse doesn't say, "Where everyone who SHOULD be there are gathered in My Name", it says "Where two or three are gathered in My Name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matt.18:20) and Father plus us equals four. So there. We're going to the dance tomorrow night, too.
So for now, being the only "sink" of any size with hot water, the bathtub is considered the biggest sink in the house. Laundry is actually being done in bulk at a laundromat, in draft-free warmth, albeit at higher expense, until it gets above freezing again, just because it's not going to get done otherwise. I need to at least put down some carpet scraps on the concrete floor, because the little rag-rug from Walmart doesn't cut it, that floor is COOOOLD. And the two warmest spots in the house are right in front of our greenhouse of a front window in the living room, and sitting here at the computer right in front of the heater here.
In other news... my tomato plants, in the front window that is so wonderfully warm, HAVE BUDS. They have buds. I have until they flower to figure out how to pollinate them without so much as a cooperative housefly. I need to take a picture of how it looks, these thriving tomato plants with tiny little buds now, against the backdrop of the snowy and bitterly cold outdoors.