Almost as if reading my thoughts, my husband told us to make a quick exit to the backdoor, “and try not to slip on the ice”, he yelled almost as an afterthought. In those 30 seconds from car to house, my eyes burned shut into squints, my nose hairs froze, and my once warmed body became an instant snowman praying for the inside of that house. The four of us: husband, two kids and myself scrambled and cramped into the tiny mudroom. We hastily took off our coats and boots and opened the house door to the welcoming…..Frost? Why was I still breathing frost in what was supposed to be a heavenly host of warmth and security? His parents greeted us; fully dressed in layers handing us the promised cocoa, and explained the weather had frozen the pipes of their old home and the heater was no longer coming out. Their only source of heat was the small electric fireplace that gave off a 2ft circumference of warmth. My husband’s mother complained, “I told your father to have a HVAC technician check the pipes and unit to this old house long before the storm hit, but NO he told me he could fix anything that broke. Ha! That’s why we are still sitting here in the cold. Not to worry the repairman should be here tomorrow morning, weather permitting”, his mother chirped along. “We’ll all stay warm bundled under all these blankets snuggled together.” It was not a warm evening at all. They should have thought about good heating service.