The morning after Christmas Jon and I woke to over a foot of snow on the ground and to a house with a temperature hovering at about 52 degrees. Salt Lake City was in the beginning stages of a snow dump that would last almost two straight days and leave nearly 90,000 people without power.

My belly is usually very good at generating its own heat, and has on several occasions nearly singed off my husband's leg hair in the middle of the night. But even my belly was cold last Friday, and we headed 20 minutes north of Salt Lake to take cover at Jon's mom's house. Halfway through the day, however, she lost power as well, and we headed back home that evening to a bitterly cold house, rooms full of Pier 1 scented candles, and several minutes of heated poker playing. Both Jon and I grew up in a religious culture that disdains "face cards" as tools of the devil, and the only thing we had to bet with were crispy M&M's which never made it from the bag to the poker table because my mouth was in the way.

We were among the very fortunate who had our power restored within 20 hours (there are hundreds of residents who still don't have power), but by the time the storm was over we had to deal with no internet service and a driveway covered in over three feet of snow.

And then our 27-year-old hot water heater kind of stopped working.

And then then the guy from Sears who showed up to install the new hot water heater that totally wasn't in the budget said that he couldn't install the new hot water heater because of some "code" or "permit" relating to the furnace and how carbon monoxide was most likely leaking out of the chimney and slowly killing us in our sleep, and that to fix the whole death-in-our-sleep thing would cost us the college fund of our second child (the college fund for our first child having already been spent on plumbing).

And then Our New Dishwasher started making WRONG noises, noises that just aren't supposed to be made by a new dishwasher, noises you'd likely hear coming from a rotting, diseased rhinoceros as it flails its gigantic limbs in a last gasping yelp for life.

And then the guys who were supposed to pick up the old refrigerator smoked too much pot and said they couldn't pick up the old refrigerator, and I'm trying to figure out a way to make a 25-year-old refrigerator look a little more cozy as it has become a permanent fixture in the living room.

And while I'm totally ready to scream and cry and wield my belly in wholly lethal and illegal ways, I'm really, really, really blessed to have a husband who can look at it all -- after two straight days of shoveling snow, snow he'll only ever accuse of being glorious and beautiful -- and smile and hold my hand and tell me Heather, it's going to be okay. And there is nothing in this world more magnificent than the way he says my name.

Launch WHITE OUT.