Day 15: Winter Woes

I’m this close to giving up this marathon. This close.

The only reason I haven’t yet is that despite having no time or energy, I do have a story to tell.

Remember how I told you about snow one night? The night when I stood and watched the falling snow, mesmerized? Well, the full extent of the impact of that snow was evident only the next morning.

So as usual, the usual morning rush had me running around. We got ready on time, for a change. One look at my snow covered car had me convinced that it was going to take some time to sort out. Just to be on the safe side I also ordered a taxi. Just in case. Of course, snow meant that taxis were all extra busy as well. I was told that there was a minimum of a twenty minute wait. That was fine. It was just a back up anyway. I would get the car defrosted before that, and I would just cancel when the car got going.

The car was covered with snow. So all I needed to do was get the snow scraper and scrape it off. Once I got all our stuff (and daughter) into the car. That was the first hurdle at which I fell. The snow had turned to ice and had frozen the doors shut.

Thankfully the boot wasn’t frozen shut, so I opened the boot, popped my handbag and laptop bag in. Armed with the de-icer, off I went to tackle the doors. The right side doors seemed to have less snow on them, something to do with the direction of the snow, I guess. By the time I had emptied the entire de-icer, on those two doors, they showed signs of opening.

Once the doors opened, Daughter and I got it, and I switched on the heating. The ice was quite firm and it didn’t make sense to use the scraper, because it was just too firm.

That was when I noticed my neighbour pouring hot water on his car. Now that was an idea. I ran back into the house to get my kettle with some warm water left over from my morning cuppa. The warm water on the windshield worked like a charm. All I needed was another round of warm water. Rushing back to the front door, hunting for my keys, it suddenly dawned on me. In my hurry to get the warm water, I had left my keys in the house. The front door is self locking so it had locked itself, leaving me and daughter locked out side, with no keys. What made it worse was that the car keys were in the same bunch as well. So we could do absolutely nothing. I called my landlady asking her if she had a spare key, and thankfully she did. Husband of course was out of town, so his spare keys couldn’t help any way. She did, and we planned to meet up near my workplace to pick up the keys.

That sorted, the next worry was transportation. Bus was an option, but risky. One the buses might not even turn up in time. Two, we had too much stuff between the two of us. With the roads being as slippery as it was, it would just be asking for trouble. Daughter didn’t even have boots on. So, the only option was for us to wait for the taxi when it came. If it came.

I called the taxi service a few times, only to be told each time that we are in the queue and the taxi would reach us, they weren’t in a position to say when.

So we waited. Thankfully we have turned off the auto lock feature of the car, so it didn’t lock us out. We sat in the car, cold. The cold car, cold from the night, cold from the ice surrounding it, was far from pleasant.

Soon the cold started creeping up our legs. Daughter was worried about other things like being late for school. She was so very upset that she wouldn’t be in time that she burst out in frustration, ‘Amma, that was a very silly thing you did!’

Yes, of course. Amma has indeed been very silly. As the wait increased my worries increased. Daughter had just about got over her horrid cough, what if that came back? I had a really busy day lined up at work, how much later was I going to get? Time passed really slowly indeed.

Finally after about sitting in that freezing car for about 40 minutes, the taxi turned up. We heaved a sigh of relief and jumped in. We had to leave the car unlocked, but I didn’t have much of a choice. I could only hope that it didn’t get stolen by the time we got back.

I had plans to come back at lunch time to get my keys and lock the car. But my day at worked proved just as busy as I thought it would be. It was six in the evening by the time we got back. Completely exhausted. Daughter slept off in the taxi back home. The poor thing clearly was exhausted with the whole day’s events. Thankfully the car was still on the drive.

That was probably the biggest relief for me. Thankfully a not so bad end to an way-too-long day.