The Sign of Fifty-Three

Sometimes you don't realize how much you need something, or even how much you use something until that thing isn't there for you any more.   For example, I have absolutely no idea how many times each day I look into the rear-view mirror to gather important information to help me drive.   But what if last night in the middle of the night, evil elves came into our garage, completely circumventing the alarm system of the house (they could have burrowed up through the cement floor) and removed my rearview mirror in a random, malicious act; how long would it take me to notice the fact this morning?

I get the children in the car, put my key in the ignition and then exclaim, "hey, where did my rearview mirror go?"  I ask my children who took the mirror—certain one of them is to blame—but after protests of innocence, we head off to school without the mirror, because I hate being late.  During that short drive I can guarantee you I'd know just how much I was dependent on the mirror being right where I expected it to be, doing its job passively and without complaint.

The good news is, my rearview mirror is still in place.  But today I had another one of those "unappreciated dependency" things happen.    Today was suppose to be cold.  I had gotten out warm clothes for my children and told them they would be wearing their warm jackets today to school and then this morning as I was making breakfast I noticed it was fifty-three degrees outside.   Hold on,  I don't remember it being that warm when I opened the door for the dog to go outside.   When I re-open the door to let the dog back my thoughts were confirmed: yes, it is definitely cold and no, it is not fifty-three degrees.

I look at the thermometer again and it still persisted on a temperature of fifty-three.  Only wait a minute, hasn't it been fifty-three degrees outside consistently for something like the last three days?  Wait, what just happened?  The digital display on the thermometer in the kitchen flashed bars across all readouts (this is one of those fancy devices that tells you more than you most likely need to know about the weather.)   Then it hits me, the batteries are dead on the transmitter outside and the inside component has just been hoping the data hasn't changed since the last update.

I take the children to school because I can't do anything about it now.   When I return home to change the battery I have to hunt down our tall ladder next door because our neighbors, like many people of late, have been upgrading their light bulbs to LED versions and needed a tall ladder to reach some of their fixtures.   With the batteries replaced in the transmitter I had digital confirmation it was no longer a constant fifty-three degrees outside.

While I was replacing the batteries in the unit, I was reminded of my childhood.   I would wake up early—as young children tend to do—and go to my parent's bedroom.  I would walk up to my mother's side of the bed and engage in some conversation with her while she tried to keep sleeping.    One of the things I would do is check the temperature with the thermometer outside the window in their room.   I would check the temperature and run excitedly back over to my mother to tell her what that temperature was.  

I learned how to read that thermometer when I was fairly young.   I would tell my mother it was "forty degrees" or "seventy-three degrees."  My mother taught me that freezing was at thirty-two degrees so it was always exciting when the temperature was below freezing as that could mean snow.   One day I got confused though because the temperature was unusual and I didn't know how to read the thermometer correctly.   I came over to her bed and told her it was, "oh-dee degrees."   I had never seen a temperature of zero before.

To this day, that same thermometer is still attached to the window frame outside my parent's bedroom.  It may not give you lots of extra information, but they haven't ever had to change the batteries and there's a good chance it will outlive the thermometer we have in our house.

The Big Boy Update:  Weather was also on my son's mind today.   He asked me if it was going to snow.  I told him I would look at the forecast and see if there was any precipitation coming our way but that even if there was, it would only be rain as it was not cold enough to be snow yet.   As I looked at the radar on my phone he asked me, "can you check Thomas's island for rain on the forecast?"  I told him I didn't see any rain on the radar for the island of Sodor (which is where Thomas the Train lives.)

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  In the car today my daughter made another random statement reaffirming her love of all things green.   She said, "I like green houses and green lights," (as we passed under a green traffic light.)