It's Frickin Cold People!

Wow, it's cold here. It's been hovering around 0°F since we got here. Right now it is 3°F with a windchill of 15°F. This is insane. Travis has been questioning our decision to move back here in a few years. I hope he is joking. This is pretty miserable weather though. I keep trying to compare it to the stifling, humid heat of Galveston, TX in the middle of summer. I'm having trouble convincing myself that the heat is worse at this point.

Yesterday, I needed to run up to the store to grab a couple items for making Christmas cookies. Alex wanted to show off his car and told me he would drive me. We ran out to his car and tried to jump in quickly to escape the wind, but were unsuccessful. The locks were frozen. After we were able to break through that ice, the doors themselves were frozen shut. After a minute of trying, Alex got his door open. He hopped inside and pushed the inside of the passenger door while I pulled from the outside. We FINALLY got it after another minute (felt like hours) of pushing and pulling.

After all that, it took him a moment to get the car started. I think a combination of the ridiculous temperatures and his car being old made it slow to start. He finally got it running, grabbed the scraper and hopped back outside to take care of the windshield. Alex had left his gloves in his bedroom, so his fingers quickly went numb, but he managed to get a big enough circle scraped out so we could drive. The whole time he was working on the windshield I had to hold his door shut because the latch was now stuck open. Alex ended up having to lock the door to get it to stay closed for the drive to the store.

It only took five minutes to get to the store (not worth walking to in this weather), so the car wasn't even warm yet. The excitement really started when we tried to get out of the car. I got out fine, locked and closed the door. Alex could not get his door to unlock, so he tried my door. I'm thinking the locks were sticking a little in the cold and his fingers were too numb to work properly. We ended up having to roll down the window so he could give me the keys. I had to use the keys from the outside while he pulled the lock on the inside. It took another five minutes, before Alex was able to escape from his car.

We were only inside the store for a little while. Unfortunately, we didn't think to leave the door unlocked when we left the car. When we got back out, we had the same problem, only this time there was no one on the inside of the car to throw their shoulder into the door. We decided to go back inside and call our dad to come back with a crow bar. We didn't know what else to do. While we were standing there, I asked Alex if he can get from his trunk into the car if he pushed the back seats down. He wasn't sure if the seats were latched, but he thought it was worth the try. I stayed inside with the groceries while he ran back out to the car. When I saw his head pop up on the inside of the car, I ran out to meet him. Ha!

We were still unable to get the door unlocked, so I had to throw the groceries in through the window and climb in through the trunk too. When I got into the back seat I said, "Who's gonna close the trunk?!" I had to lay down in the little trunk, find a hole to pull the trunk down, and yank it down hoping the entire time that I didn't get my hair or head caught somewhere. I made it into the back seat again, alive and well. A family in an SUV drove by and gave us a nasty glare. It must have looked like we were stealing the car. I was unable to get the car unlocked with my not-yet-frozen fingers.

Let's just say I was VERY thankful to get back into the delightfully wonderful heat of my dad's apartment.