All Iced-Up and No Where to Go

My husband saved my life today.

I spent the morning cleaning the house. Shees, the germs were taking over! I stuck my hair in a pony tail, stayed in my jammy pants, and a short-sleeved tee, and typical of me, I was cleaning the house in my barefeet. Usually, not worth mentioning.

Anyway, I scrubbed everything that didn't move. The dogs just got out of the way as I sprayed commercial household cleaners on surfaces and then sucked-up or washed-up dirt, mud, dried-on-food and dust and crust.
Sometimes, it's easier to go through the routine of ungrunging the abode, by yakking on the phone to a friend (sister, adult child or mother) about more interesting things than scraping frosting splatter from the walls.

At 11:55 a.m. (not that I really looked at the clock at this time) I took a floor mat out onto the front porch to shake the crud off of it. Mind you, I was still dressed in mostly nothing. As I talked to my sister, I shook the rug and the dog closed the front door behind me. When I was done snapping that rug into the yard, and holding my breath so the dust mites didn't get inhaled, I turned to open the door and to my horror, IT WAS LOCKED!
I still had nothing on my feet and realized that I was going to have to run around the house to the side garage door -- through 6 inches of crunchy, icy snow. I still had Lee on the phone as I was running and screaming from the pain of the cold. Incidentally, it was 9 DEGREES BELOW ZERO!! That is deadly COLD!!
The garage door was locked! I was crestfallen to think that I was not out of my misery but had to, now, run to the back door through 12 inches of glacial crust. I knew I couldn't gracefully make it down that hill on my frozen feet, which now felt like I was running on stumps weighing 100 pounds each and were now totally numb. I had to run around the hill which was about 300 feet further. When I finally got to the back door, I found that it was -- LOCKED!!

My misery had graduated to suffering. I was shivering and panicking. I was officially locked out of my house, not dressed for the elements and knew I could freeze to death soon. I told Lee goodbye and called Victor, at work, who didn't answer. I knew I had to warm my feet and conserve my body heat. Having no close neighbors, I knew I was in trouble.

Miraculously, I had hauled that rug around the house with me. I threw it down on top of the snow, and squatted down on the rug, leaning my body against the back door, out of the wind, with my chin resting on my knees and my hands trying to warm my toes.
Victor called me back! I wailed on the staticky phone, telling him my dilemna in a very immature whine. I had poor phone reception as it was a mobile phone (not my cell) and it was not very close to the base, which was in the lusciously warm home, in the master bedroom. It was a miracle that I had the phone with me in the first place!

It was Victor's lunch hour and he was already leaving work. He would be home as soon as he could. I called Lee back and she was so sweet to keep me talking and not thinking of the pain of the cold. Every minute felt like an eternity.

Finally, Victor made it home, came in the front door, raced through the house to open the back door. I found it hard to stand. He held me for a long time. Oh, the exquisite pain as the blood starts to warm those near-frostbit digits.

After snooping around on Wikipedia, I learned that I was close to 2nd degree frostbite and possibly well on my way to 3rd degree stages. I am fine now. We are working on putting a hide-a-key somewhere outside.