I'm ready for it to warm up now...

It's cold, okay? The night before last, I was up several times during the night trying to thaw out half of the water lines in the trailer. Faith and I made this discovery around 11 PM, just in time for bed. I did everything I could for the next hours. I readjusted the heating tape that I did not trust, removed and replaced the insulation around the access panel, stuck a space heater in obscure locations hoping for a reaction, and could do nothing but hope. I checked on the space heater an hour later and discovered that it had an internal thermostat which turned it off before it was anywhere near effective. I tried to sleep. I didn't think that trudging through the snow and moving everything all over again would do any more than ease my mind that I had done everything conceivably possible short of getting more heaters started under the trailer (which I was planning to do in the morning if none of this worked). The long and short of it all was that my work of perceived futility must have paid off somehow. At 8 AM the water started running again with a pop and a bang (and it was colder outside than earlier in the night).

I was glad to have that burden off of my mind. However, in all of my running around in the dark, I had tripped over the extension cord to the van and unknowingly unplugged it. The block heater didn't have as much time as I had hoped that morning. Phoebe (our van, license plate beginning FBE) started, but she sure wasn't happy for the first while with her groanings! She warmed up for about a 1/2 hour while we finished getting the kids ready and ran for much of the day with errands, picking a friend up from the airport in Regina, and shuttling kids to and from school. Boy, it was cold out there! The wind chill is what gets a person. Even today it brought tears to my eyes and pain to my face and limbs just walking in it. I hate any windchill around 40 below zero. Lord, please let it warm up. My house, vehicle, body, and family are a little worse for wear because of it. Could we just get to Florida already?

- Mark