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There's nothing like being nudged awake by your husband with the request: "Could you call a plumber?" If only it were the sink infuriated or one of the toilets, but alas, the shower comes at a trickle, and when I finally rouse myself from some strange dreams about this past semester, I find the head on a shelf and our basket of shower supplies scattered on the ground, the strange brontosaurus neck of our shower jutting out above me. A plumber is due, and while I wait, I thought I would check in here, my pajama'ed self enjoying the soft falling of wispy snow out the dining room window, the pleasure of oversleeping, the stacks of books surrounding me. Muffled in the background of my phone calling to the plumbing service were assumptions that something has frozen up, and I will not be surprised if this is so; the turnover in cold from backyard slush to snappy ice was awfully dramatic, even for these parts.

I'm thinking of the ice storm in the Northeast. There are some gorgeous pictures of it:
- icy branches
- encased asters
- i will admit
- the ice storm
- blue + white

We once visited my grandparents in Michigan--for Christmas? for Thanksgiving?--and power was lost for nearly a day. I was sick then, from something that stripped me of my insides and left me wallowing in the quilts, mostly unaware of the slow chill descending upon the house: their heat is electric. This means no showers, for there is no heat for the water, and a slow tick downward in temperature. I'm thinking of those in the Northeast: do some have electric heat too? We simply piled on the blankets and hoped the pipes wouldn't freeze.

And here I am, secretly having turned the heat up yesterday, "forgetting" to turn it down at night, and still, there is the possibility that it's frozen, this shower of ours.