Will The Pain Be Over Soon?

I have to believe so.

There I am, driving down an icy road with wind howling against my truck (again!), snow blowing across the road, wind chill below zero, my fingertips in enough pain that I need to employ deep breathing... Only this morning with a special twist: I'm holding the driver's side door shut with my free hand. Why the hell...? Seems some ice got into the latch mechanism. Not surprising, considering the freezing rain we got Sunday morning, followed by a downpour, followed by a skin-cracking refreeze a day later. Door wouldn't shut when I climbed in the truck to go home after work. This has happened before. Ha! Since I've seen it before, I know what to do. all I need to do is grab the nearest tool at hand and push the latch piece in the edge of the door. What do I grab? The clip for the trailer hitch we keep in the cab all the time. With a brilliant smoothness I couldn't repeat if I tried, the wire bail gets completely trapped as the latch rolls back.

So now I still can't close the door, and it's stuck open even wider, and a crucial piece of hardware is now at risk of being ruined.

Halfway to the auto dealer where I figured I'd get a nice mechanic to help me in my predicament (and I did--he got it loose in about 5 minutes and charged me nothing), I saw a robin fly across the road and land in a shrub, its orange breast puffed out against the cold.