Frozen locks

Christmas was great, but I'm not sure how to blog about it. Too big. Instead, I'm going to tell you a story about how easy it can be to make my day.

My car lock seems to freeze every time the temperature goes below freezing. And to make it even worse, my VW only has ONE lock, on the driver's side. There's no second choice of the passenger door -- or even the back hatch, since if you climb in through the back and try to start the car the VW car alarm goes off. I'm stuck with the driver's side lock or nothing. So, I'll stand out in the frigid cold, with the wind blowing up from the wide-open floodplain down the hill (it's a forest preserve, no houses to break the prairie wind), jiggling my key in and out of the lock, trying to melt the ice with friction. It usually takes 5-7 minutes. Awful.

Why don't I use lock de-icer, you may ask. I have, indeed, tried lock de-icer. However, I could never get the stuff (aka isopropyl alcohol) into the lock, because the spigot didn't fit in the keyhole. It would spray all over the place, but it never seemed to get into the lock. So, I would stand there pushing my key in and out, watching little grains of metal collect on the key and feeling worried that I was grinding my lock mechanism into oblivion. Every once in a while, I would spray some de-icer over the front of the lock and say a little prayer.

Then my old friend Monica came to visit after Christmas, and my life changed. Lo and behold, my lock froze just as we were on our way to IKEA (one of Bolingbrook's claims to fame!). Monica is endlessly practical and vetoed my friction method. So, we went across the street to Walgreen's to get some de-icer. She listened to my carefuly-crafted story of woe, that European cars have keyholes too narrow for American de-icer spigots. But she felt sure there was an answer other than helpless indignation, and she thought we might find it at Walgreen's.

Walgreen's only carried the ONE brand of de-icer, that I've tried before. But Monica inquisitively popped off the top, and showed me the red cap over the spigot. I thought it was just to protect the spigot, you know, like the little bit of foil under the cap in a ketchup bottle.

"See, it has an elongated tip, Heidi. We can just cut it off and I think it will fit in your lock!"

I stood, dumbfounded. And Monica even has a pocket-knife. The woman does, after all, work for the Girl Scouts.

And it WORKED! And my lock was unfrozen in like, three seconds.

And suddenly my winter seems so much more fun! A great new job AND a lock de-icer that WORKS! Life is good.