Frozen In

Dearest Rachel –

It so happens that one of the members of the praise team at the church is from Florida – in fact, she’s Brian’s niece, and therefore a relative of ours, albeit a time or two removed – and isn’t used to the weather here (to be sure, no one gets used to this level of cold, but it can’t be helped). As the story goes, when she opened her whether app on Sunday morning, she thought it was having trouble loading; she’d never seen a zero on it before, and apparently mistook in for a daisywheel.

This being her first Chicago winter, she’s got an excuse; Daniel, not so much. He hasn’t been driving your car for the past couple of weeks – although that’s because he hasn’t had call to leave the house on his own since Thanksgiving. As a result, when he tried to head to church yesterday morning – as I was already there, working the booth – he couldn’t get it to turn over. As the temperatures were actually subzero at the house at the time, I recommended that he stay put and just watch the broadcast over the internet; Meema and Poppa were already staying home for this and other reasons, so there wasn’t a need to put in an appearance to see them.

Likewise, although there had been some discussion on the group chat about getting together over the weekend, between the usual scheduling conflicts (including my weekend assignment) and the weather, it was ultimately decided that nothing was going to happen. So nothing was lost by being frozen in; in fact, as you’ll agree, Daniel was perfectly fine with it, apart from a certain measure of concern for the car. I don’t know if he has to worry too much about it; we can give it a try once things warm up later this week (they say it might get into the fifties, in fact!)

But as far as Sunday was concerned, we were on our own, and there wasn’t a whole lot of point to picking anything up for lunch, as it would likely be cold by the time I got home (even over the course of the ten or fifteen minutes’ drive; it was that cold). I did stop at a local grocery store for ingredients for one possible idea (and wound up buying plenty more than the necessary items, but that’s another story you’ve heard before; there’s no need to belabor it again, unless I manage to make something out of it all), but after asking Daniel what he might like, he indicated that he would be fine with stuff that we already had around the house.

It sometimes feel like I spend too many days like this – accentuated by the fact that, while the boys are together in the family room, I’m off by myself in the bedroom, alternately reading and watching stuff on my own – but on a day like this, when it’s just too cold to do much more, it’s nice to be able to curl up with what we have.

The only regret is that the “we” here is somewhat metaphorical.

Still, if you could keep your eye on me, I wouldn’t be completely alone. And if you’d wish me luck, that would be nice, too, as you can see full well that I could use it.