the cold

it has been so goddamned cold here recently, our pipes froze. Fortunately there was no real damage to the house--the water meter burst but I got the main valve shut off quickly, so the worst we have is now-gelatinous cat litter on our laundry room floor, and the water company replaced the burst meter for free--but I've been waiting all day to thaw out the pipes. I discovered late this afternoon, after pointing a space heater at the pipes for hours, that the problem is almost certainly that the source pipe itself is the one that's frozen, and I've been waiting for the "welder" to come for hours now--apparently they run a current or something through the sidewalk box and it melts the ice. Oy. I've learned that this is happening all over the city; everyone's got a story today. It gets cold here but rarely this cold (below zero two days in a row).