Cold Days

I just laid out a rough outline for an attempt on an urban sort of fantasy, a genre I've never done more than flirt with. And then today, out of the blue another idea for a more epic fantasy story jammed itself into my head, on top of the urban fantasy that was busy mud wrestling for brain space with the details of the books I've written and am still working on.
What is it about cold weather that brings me tons of ideas that I'm forced merely to hen peck while struggling to continue the physical tasks required for keeping horses maintained during winter weather? I find myself rigging heat lamps and then scribbling notes with a pencil held in my teeth while my fingers thaw and then it's back outside to break water troughs (one day I'll fall through the ice and then maybe I'll start using a sledge hammer rather than jumping up and down on the ice until it cracks) and writing is put off until my zipper thaws enough for me to climb out of the neck of my coat.
Ideas never come to me at convenient moments, when I'm staring at a blank page, thwarted by a conflict going on amongst my characters and their enemies that I can't resolve in an adequate fasion. They never show up while I'm sitting at the doctor's office bored beyond conscious thought, or during a traffic jam while I'm doing nothing more constructive than burning gas. No, the best ideas seem reserved for the moments when I have something else to do, and usually a horse depending on me to do it, which makes it impossible for me to forsake the task in favor of giving my attention to whatever little thought pops into my head and wants to be addressed. That's why all of my coat and jean pockets are stuffed with scraps of paper filled with notes that no one can read and why the dryer's lint trap is constantly clogged with malformed wads of paper that were lately something important that I'll spend the next week cursing over and looking for...