When summer was sizzling hot and the temperatures were in the nineties, I remember praying for the cold and snow. I had enough of summer and I was ready for wintertime. The air conditioning unit could not keep up with the heat and humidity, and it was irritating in our house. Cold and snow sounded like a welcome reprieve. It is the middle of September, and it has been as cold as mid-January for most of the month. Both of us had almost a foot and a half of snow on the ground, added to the foot of snow we had two mornings earlier. I was looking outside, thinking about how beautiful the wintertime wonderland was, and then I remembered it wasn’t sintertime yet. We still had at least six more months of wintertime weather to get through. I wondered if someone was listening when I prayed for this weather and took me literally. My gas furnace had been cleaned and maintained, even though I wasn’t ready for wintertime. I would have loved this weather for Christmas, as we would have pulled out our big sled and hitched the horse to it. The boys and my husband and I would wrap up in blankets and turn on the oil furnace to keep our feet warm. All snuggled in the sled, all of us would ride across the fields to visit our mom and dad. This was one of the greatest joys of living in the country. The space furnaces kept us fairly warm, and all of us all sang on the way. I was hoping for that at Christmas, however not before Thanksgiving. I turned up the temperature control and sighed, wintertime was entirely early this year and it was because of me.