We went from VERY cold to WOW cold today!
When I woke up at 5:00 A.M., the temperature was 6º!
When I went out to warm up my car for the morning drive to work at 6:00, it was 2º!
As I was walking out the door, I decided that I should do the manly husband thing and fill my wife’s car and the Super Crew with De-Icer windshield washer fluid. So, I grabbed the keys to both cars, the bottle of fluid and headed out into the frozen tundra.
I didn’t think of wearing gloves…I mean, what’s the difference between 19º and 2º? Besides, I am a man. I don’t need gloves.
I had to pry the Paseo’s door open…literally! Gosh, would it even start?…It did.
Even though I had turned the defroster on full blast, I knew that it wouldn’t make a dent in the inch of snow and ice on the windshield. So, I got to work scraping the ice of the glass.
Man was that loud! I have heard that snow muffles sound.
Well, ice on a windshield magnifies it! Crunch, crunch! I cringed with each stroke.
“I’m going to wake up the entire complex.”
By the time I finished scraping the front windshield and headed over to the other two cars, my hands were beginning to freeze. But, it’s not too bad…
My wife’s car door opened easily. I popped the “Hood Release” button. Great! This is going pretty smoothly…How quickly things can change!
I couldn’t find the hood latch!
I don’t know how long it actually took but it seemed like a very long time. The longer my hands were exposed to the cold, the faster the clock seemed to turn.
“Finally…found it!”
I raised the hood of my car and had a realization…I’ve never looked under the hood of my wife’s car…So I really don’t know where everything is.
I saw a reservoir but it looked too big to be for the windshield washer fluid. I had decided to wear my contacts this morning which means that I can see great…
FROM A DISTANCE! I couldn’t read the text on the lid!!!
That meant that I had to go back upstairs TO GET MY READING GLASSES to figure out where the windshield washer reservoir was!
My fingers felt like they were about four minutes from exploding! And, the clock was ticking…I needed to get to work.
Before I took off, I unlocked the Super Crew and popped its hood. That way I could leave both sets of keys on the counter when I run back upstairs to get my reading glasses.
Before I went back down to the parking lot, I grabbed my gloves!!! (Did you know that they don’t work nearly as well after your hands are already frozen?)
Aha! I was right! That wasn’t the windshield reservoir! It’s over here.
I took off the lid and grabbed the De-Icer fluid…
It has a plastic locking lid! The kind with the plastic tab that needs to be snapped off and then peeled off!
Shoot! It would be really nice to have a knife…or some scissors…
The thought of using my already aching fingers to open that did not exactly warm my heart. Off came the gloves…
“I don’t have to do this!”
I decided to just plunge in. It didn’t hurt nearly as bad as I imagined!…
BECAUSE I COULDN’T FEEL ANTHING!
Because it had been sitting in an outdoor 2º freezer for 10 minutes, the tab broke off before I could perform the peel operation.
By now, the pain in my hands was seriously challenging my masculity!
An argument broke out in my head…
The icy cold whispered “You don’t HAVE to do this!”…”But, but, but, I’m the man…”
I had to decide quickly, before I morphed into a block of ice…
“That lid is coming off!”
I just started cranking on it.
“It broke free! Great! I’ll be done in a minute or two…”
As I took the lid off, my next obstacle appeared…
a foil seal across the lid of the container!
Let me get my key…
It’s warming up the Toyota…
and I just took the other two sets of keys upstairs! I didn’t have ANYTHING sharp at my disposal! Nothing!
The argument in my head resumed…
“I DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS!”…”What? You’re going to make your wife and daughter do it?”
I took my swollen, frozen digit and started ramming them against the foil…once…twice…three times…
On the fourth time, I broke through. My face was starting to hurt.
I poured the windshield washer fluid into my wife’s car. The reservoir was nearly full before I started pouring! *&#$^%*#$)!
“Fine…I’ll do the truck…”
It too was full! *&#$^%*#$)!!!!
I closed everything up, slammed the hoods shut, put the lid back on the container, picked up my gloves and ran for the Toyota.
Shoot! The rear window is still covered in ice. I guess the defogger wasn’t designed to melt quarter inch thick ice.
Back to waking everybody up…
At this point, I didn’t really care. In fact, I was almost muttering, “I don’t care if I do wake everyone else up. My rent is paid. It’s not my fault that I have to go to work earlier than them.”
I worked as fast as I could, hoping that that my exertion of energy could do something to combat the numbing cold.
When I got into the car to drive to work, I was moaning in pain! I mean out loud! My hands hurt for the next 10-15 minutes.
In the gender wars, women like to point out how good men have it, how lucky they are…
Really?
All I can say is don’t let anyone kid you, there is a BIG difference between 19º and 2º!
