Coldest day of the winter so far. Birds are falling out of the sky, frozen solid, and skidding along the street like hockey pucks. My wife, who grew up here and is somewhat more accustomed to cold weather than am I, who grew up in the milder winters of SW Washington State, brought home a tube of this liquid wax stuff you can apply to the rubber seals of your car doors to keep them from freezing shut.

“Here, you go put it on the doors,” she said.

I protested that I had bronchitis but it was no use. So I went outside, making noises and waving my feet at the cats to keep them from going outside (two of the three cats are under house arrest) in my sandals and sweat pants and a coat. This should only take a minute, right? I was not being a good sport about this, though. I felt it was unfair that a sick man be sent out into the cold like this. I kicked off my sandals and stepped into the garden clogs standing on the porch. I turned to head down the steps, and instead nearly did a somersault. The garden clogs were frozen solidly to the porch.

With some effort, I broke them free and went to the cars. The doors were already frozen shut, but not too bad. I got my door open. I looked at the liquid wax dispenser. It looked like one of those shoe polish things; size of a toothpaste tube, but made of medium-hard plastic, with a sponge at one end.

I squeezed and squeezed, and nothing came out. Eventually, I gave up and read the directions:

“Shake well, and apply evenly to the rubber seal of your car door.”

Okay.

Think, Miguel. (It is cold out, remember?). The shoe polish things work like this: you squeeze them, some polish comes out, is absorbed by the sponge and you use that to spread it over the shoes.

But none came out. I squeezed harder. Nothing. I pulled out the plastic plug holding the sponge part to see if maybe there was some seal in place that you had to remove after purchasing before you can use it. But, no seal.

So I held it up to the door seal again, and gave it a manly squeeze, and it went “pop!” as the plug and sponge part shot out, and two-thirds of the contents sprayed over the side of the door and the driver’s seat, and me.

Upon contact with air, it dried instantly. Or maybe it just froze.

I returned to the house, having a Looney-Tunes freakout, demanding paper towels, which Alpha brought me while Beta held the cats to keep them from escaping.

I cleaned it up as well as I could, but it was dark and I couldn’t really see what I was doing. Eventually, I figured out how the wax dispenser worked – you have to press it up against the rubber seal, which presses down a valve it seems, allowing the wax to flow. I got the drivers doors of both cars waxed, returned to the house, thawed out.

This morning I finally got a good look at my car, in the light. It looks like a mastodon tried to mate with it. But the door opened on the first try.