I received a note from the post office the other day that a package was waiting for me.

I was pretty sure I knew what it was but I had no opportunity to stop and get it. It has been a week spent on the phone with different agencies trying to get information for my friend Grace’s Medicaid application.

Yesterday I had a pretty full morning writing and cleaning and gathering forms.

At noon I went with a parishioner to do a hospital visit about an hour away, after which we went grocery shopping. My friend picked me up some dry gas for our cars as a gift while I bought food for the weekend.

Even as we were driving home from Leominster MA, the wind was picking up and the temperature was beginning to drop as the arctic wind storm predicted for Massachusetts began.

By the time I got back to the Vicarage, the wind was whistling through the downspouts of our gutters like the trumpets of the second coming.The temps last night fell to -45 or -50 Fahrenheit with the windchill factor, but we managed to seal ourselves in pretty well and turn the heat up to keep ourselves warm.

I heard from my daughter, Melanie, this morning. Her living room got down to 52 degrees last night and the outside security doors of her building both got blown open during the night, one of them blowing right off the apartment building. We lost a few branches here at The Vicarage, but nothing quite as serious as that.

We are staying inside today, reading, writing, practicing sermons for tomorrow, eating and just generally staying warm.

Oh yes! I did get to stop at the post office before the storm started in earnest. The package was, as I anticipated, my sister’s Christmas present returned by customs from The Netherlands. Apparently Kool Aid is now a safety issue, or maybe it was the instant coffee.