It is cold out.

The cheer­less chill that has descended upon us is one I con­nect to the maroon-shaded gaze of Lord Vol­d­er­mort. It’s a cold that I’ve asso­ci­ated with the oft-written “chilled me to the bones”. For what has been a rel­a­tively mild win­ter, recent weeks have yielded a fresh bought of low tem­per­a­tures and high snowfall.

Our trav­els last Christ­mas from Big Stone City, SD, to Sioux Falls, SD, had been a har­row­ing mis­ad­ven­ture, dur­ing which we wit­nessed a hand­ful of stranded vehi­cles, many of which my father took the time to res­cue. Mostly, though, it was 10 mph “white knuckle” dri­ving though ter­ri­ble roads, low vis­i­bil­ity, and gen­eral fatigue.

This year, we thought we were free of such a tor­ment. Instead, once we were out­side of Mil­bank, the blow­ing snow hit. I had, hith­erto, never con­sid­ered “blow­ing snow” to be any­thing close to dan­ger­ous. ‘What harm is there,’ I thought, ‘when you can drive right through it?’ Then we hit enough blow­ing snow to cre­ate white-out-like con­di­tions, and I knew the harm. It was like dri­ving through cloud. Tiny, island patches of road would open up (and close) before us, offer­ing hope and despair. Our only real guid­ance came in the form of the reflec­tive road posts and occas­sional road signs. We did even­tu­ally make our way safely but not before a cou­ple of tense moments.

This Christ­mas has been a lit­tle sad. It’s been our first time see­ing a lot of these peo­ple since our news, and that reminds us of our news, which makes us sad. Plus, it’s a gen­er­ally happy time, which makes one think of puppy dogs, can­dy­canes, and babies, which makes us sad. And, by ter­ri­ble coin­ci­dence, the movie we saw for Christ­mas day, Mar­ley and Me, fea­tures a scene in which the cou­ple dis­cov­ers that they’ve been expe­ri­enc­ing an Anem­bry­onic preg­nancy, which made us sad. But that’s how it is. It all just makes me all the more eager to be able to try again, which will hope­fully be soon. I’ll be sure to video-blog our progress.

BUT, this hol­i­day sea­son is not meant to be sad. It’s meant to be a joy­ous time. So, to share the hap­pi­ness, a hap­pi­ness that Holli and I have been enjoy­ing these past weeks, I present to you the pilot episode of the anime Bleach.