A Chilling Disaster

So here I am walking home from the train station last night, body shivering, teeth clattering, thinking of my warm and cozy living room and dreaming of my usual hot shower. During winter, I take my showers in the evening for a couple of reasons. One, I'm usually quite cold when I come home after a long day's work and my muscles are stiff and achy. Thanks to my amazing friend Allie Pallie, we've now got a "massage" shower head with four different adjustable settings. And there's nothing like a hot hard stream of water to soothe my cold and tired muscles and transform me from a rigid icicle into a soft, warm, pliable, oozing piece of happiness and content! Second, I can barely find the strength to roll out of my warm sheep skin bed in the early, cold, dark winter mornings let alone shower and walk out in the freezing mountain air after that.


So, returning to my original story. As I near our house, I notice the lights in the second hand store underneath are on. This is unusual because the second hand store is not open on Wednesdays and even if it was, it would surely be closed for business at 5 minutes to 6 in the evening. I don't think too much of it, however, since our landlord sometimes roams around in there at odd hours of the day. As i walk past the door, quickly heading towards our stairway which will take me to my haven, a man i don't recognize walks out of the store in a hurry murmuring to himself. I nod politely and proceed to put one foot on the bottom stair. In that moment, Landlord pokes his head out from the storeroom.


"Hi", I greet him, "How's it going?"

"Not good, not good at all" he shakes his head.

"What's wrong?" I ask only to be polite but hope the answer will be short and sweet so I can head on upstairs finally.

"The heater's broke. I've got the man here trying to fix it" Landlord says.

"Oh, really" I say absent-mindedly. I am just about ready to tell him to have a nice evening and climb up the stairs when it hits me! The heater's broken!!!!

"In our side of the house too?" I ask. It's more of a plead than a question.

"Yeah, the whole house. But don't worry, it takes a while for the house to cool off. It's still warm in there." Landlord reassures me waiving his hand toward our windows above my head.



Suddenly my comforting image of my evening at my warm, cozy home disintegrates in my mind and a very different image takes its place. The Titanic wreckage and the frozen bodies of the dead victims floating stiffly in the arctic waters!

"OK" i whisper and head on upstairs.



Landlord was right. The house had not yet completely cooled off. My husband was waiting for me with his usual smile on his face. He had about a million candles covering every possible available surface in the living room. It looked quite cozy in fact and very romantic on top of that!

"Oh honey, I've got some bad news for you" hubby tells me his smile fading somewhat but not disappearing completely.

"I know" I whimper.

"Don't worry baby" he says "I'm here. I'll keep you warm."



I knew that of course. My husband is a heater himself. He's my personal, portable radiator. When I'm in his arms, I'm not afraid of anything at all, least of all plummeting temperatures. But I had to part with my hot shower. This thought made me think of something.

"Hey, you took a shower" I said to my husband.

"Yeah, I did, with cold water. It was not too bad" he smiled.



Whatever you say, Iceman. Poor thing. Unlike me, he cannot afford not to take a shower after work. He comes home literally covered in saw dust and with wood chips in his hair.



A few hours later, the landlord rang the door bell to inform us the heater had been fixed. Mmmmkaaay. I shifted slightly in hubby's bear hug. The water will be hot again in the morning. I'll take a rain cheque on that shower.