Day 2: The Cold Never Bothered Me Anyway

 It was cold today.

I mean obviously. It’s January in Alaska. But compared to the last week? Compared to the majority of our gross, wet, rainy, miserable, mild winter? It was COLD. It was so cold that when I went to start up my car this evening, it took two hands and a lot of strength to heave the driver’s door open. Then, as I opened Camden’s door (footnote: does every parent have their passenger seats “labeled” as to whichever kid normally sits there? Instead of saying “the right rear passenger seat”, we say “Camden’s seat”, because that’s where he’s basically been assigned since birth. Doesn’t everyone do that? No? Just me? Anyways. As I opened Camden’s door to search for an ice scraper and went to close the door, the door bounced back at me, because the locking mechanism was frozen. Well that’s rude. So we go to hockey practice and thank the good Lord it was a board meeting night because I spent all but 20 minutes of that practice indoors, thanks. And after suffering those 20 minutes of freezing feels-like 11 degrees, trying to scrape frozen fog off the rink glass so I can actually see, and then chirp at Cam to hurry up because I’m freezing, he asks if he can stay for open skate “because it helps my skating skills!” Which is a cop-out because honestly he just wants to hot dog around, but then he argues “but you always say to save your messing around time for open skate!” You got me, kid. You have fifteen minutes. Fifteen freezing, painfully cold minutes. But he didn’t care. He doesn’t feel the cold, like ever. He could be the next featured male protagonist in Frozen 3. The cold never bothered him anyway.

A blurry photo taken of a moving target through a frozen glass pane

So I dragged him off the ice 15 (exact) minutes later and we walk up to the car, the last car in the lot, and I go to put the key in. And the key lock is frozen solid. Like my key won’t actually go in. So there I was, in the dark, alone, shivering, with my hockey player (who was quite warm thanks because he was in full gear and just skated for two straight hours), knelt in front of my drivers door performing CPR on my stupid car (cupping my hands and blowing hot air into the keyhole) and then literally using my key as an ice pick to slowly jam it in the keyhole and jimmy it like some sort of horizontal ice fishing, until the ice either broke free or melted, then another two-handed pull to get the car door open. You know, Kodiak is mild temperature wise to the rest of Alaska. And don’t get me wrong, I love the cold and I love winter. But if we can at least leave out car doors and frozen keyholes, that would be just dandy.

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