We made it through a vortex

Thank you, Valiant But Tiny Hair Dryer.

It’s been quite a week, even besides all the national fuckery.

Friday a week ago, I was upset about the weather forecast. 

Me:  Is it going to snow tonight?  And when is the polar vortex coming?!

Common Household Husband:  [burps loudly].  That was it.  That was the polar vortex.

If only it were that simple. 

Sunday the CHH pulled something out of his sweatshirt pocket, and said, “I wonder why I have this in my pocket?”  It was a tiny glass duck.  Reminds me of the time I cleaned out my purse and found a small plastic dinosaur, left over from mom-of-small-children times.  The CHH put the duck back into his pocket.

Wednesday morning I discovered that our hot water pipe at the kitchen sink was frozen.  It's been years since this happened.  We used to have to drip the faucet if the weather got cold, but then we fixed it, by encasing that pipe in lots of insulation and closing up the area behind a drywall panel in the garage ceiling.  Since then we haven't dripped the faucet in cold weather, and the pipe has not frozen.

But this week’s polar vortex hell-freezing-over cold was too much for it.  And the cold water pipe froze too, at the kitchen sink faucet.    

It was COLD.  “How cold was it?”  It was around -12 F overnight (without the wind chill) and wasn’t much warmer during the day.  Hell has, in fact, frozen over, and all its inhabitants resurfaced this week in the nation’s capital.

The Common Household Husband cut his work day short to come home. We set to work in the 10-degree-F cold garage.  He unscrewed all six screws and removed the panel.  This took a while because we are not Michelangelo and we’re not used to working at the ceiling level.  

He pulled out the thick insulation, and pushed our Valiant But Tiny Hair Dryer up in there.   It died after about a minute.  I felt the universe telling me, “You’re gonna need a bigger hair dryer.”

Not a great place for a hair dryer

I was on hair dryer resurrection duty.  First I went upstairs to vainly look for another hair dryer.

Back to the basement.  I coaxed VBT Hair Dryer to life.  It ran for a few more minutes, enough to get one of the water pipes flowing!  Yes! 

Success!

Then to get the other water pipe freed, we had to go to the other side of the wall, in the basement.  At least there is no panel there.  VBT Hair Dryer quit twice more, but I resurrected it each time.  

Sticking the hair dryer WAY into the wall.

Although he was victorious against the polar vortex, the CHH was covered in drywall dust, and got some in his lungs (not good!), which periodically set him coughing.  He put his sweatshirt in the washing machine.  Later, in the dryer, I found the tiny glass duck that he had had in his pocket.

The duck survived.  I am trying to decide if that is a portent.

Resilient duck.