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.

Saanen Christmas Fair, Friday, December 14th

Every year the village of Saanen puts on a Christmas Fair. They close down a portion of the main street to traffic and put up all kinds of stands full of beautiful Christmas 'stuff', most of it hand-made. A live band walks around the fair grounds making stops along the way to play a Christmas tune or two. And since we live in the village of Saanen, and since i love Christmas fairs and just about anything that has to do with Christmas, we're happy to attend every year. Last Friday was our second time.

It was a brutally cold evening. My husband advised me to put on long johns under my pants to which i laughed but did it anyway and was i ever glad i did! Despite my long johns, jacket, boots, mitts, and hat, i could only brave the elements for just over half an hour. The good people of Saanen had built fires in special fire pits along the fair grounds with cauldrons of "glüwein" boiling over the fire and we made a stop at everyone of them, drinking glüwein and warming up by the fire. I still can't get the smell of smoke out of my jacket!

Glüwein is a traditional Swiss winter drink of boiled red wine spiced with .... well, everyone makes their own little different concoction but the main ingredients are cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and anise. It tastes like...like Christmas and it's hot, so it keeps you warm. So that was the reason behind our four cups of glüwein in the course of about 30 minutes! It went down fast and as soon as one cup was finished we quickly got another one lest we freeze. It helped only a little bit in keeping us warm but it did help tremendously in getting me drunk! By the time we got home i was belching Christmas carols at the top of my lungs!

Advent Wreath Switch-A-Roo!

What's wrong with this picture? Look closely. This is our Christmas Advent wreath. Two of the candles have already been lit, of course, since last Sunday was Second Advent. But notice something odd? You may not, because to an unaware set of eyes, it all looks perfectly fine. But i know different!

My husband and I were in the store looking at Christmas Advent wreaths. They had a few different kinds. They were all made of real, live pine branches but the difference was in the pine cones, bows and candles. Only one wreath had natural pine cones while all the others had their pine cones sprayed with either silver or gold sparkles. My husband wanted the natural pine cone wreath, of course, but I didn't like the colour of the candles. They were orange. I wanted red candles. So, we had a slight problem? Not really.

My "handy" husband had a "brilliant" idea. He first checked to see if the candles were really stuck on the wreath or if you could pull them off. You could pull them off. Next, he pulled all the orange candles off the natural pine cone wreath and replaced them with red candles from another wreath while putting the orange ones on the other one. Right there in the store! I wasn't aware Swiss people did this sort of thing! I'm very much afraid my North American lifestyle is rubbing off on him!

So now, he's got his natural pine cones and I've got my red candles, and who cares the orange/gold rimmed ribbon does not match!