Guest post by Erin Blakemore

Now it starts to get GOOD, people.  And by good, of course I mean bad, because to Laura it’s not even worth the effort to get up in the morning (sacrilege to a group of women and men whose lives revolve around being useful and doing their chores).  She does drag herself out of bed, only to give in to the psychological angst of having to contend with the endless snow and her fear of being unable to help support her family and send Mary to college.
Ma listens to Laura’s wail and reassures her that her math studies will keep her busy through this next blizzard.  While the girls have been sleeping upstairs, she’s been her usual resourceful self, pushing the table to the kitchen to conserve heat.
As Pa prepares to go to Fuller’s store, there’s a moment of fear:  Pa warns Mary that he may have to use some of her college money to get supplies.  “You can depend on me paying you back,” he says, but we get a sense of the girls holding their breath as they watch Pa leave the house with the red leather pocketbook that holds the family’s savings.
Carrie is the next to break — she watches Laura pour the last of the kerosene into the lamp and gasps in fear.  The girls try to do their lessons while waiting for Pa, but the room is cramped and poorly lit.  We get a sense of claustrophobia and anxiety that is heightened, not assuaged, by Pa’s entrance with bad news:  no kerosene, no meat, no coal, no school until there is coal.  He has, however, bought two pounds of tea, which Ma characteristically paints as a blessing.
As Pa does the midafternoon chores, the girls work inside.  Mary is braiding a new rug, which she does by touch; when she asks Laura to sew it up for her, Laura initially says she’d rather finish the lace she’s working, but then feels bad at Mary’s cheer in the face of her desperation.  She agrees to sew the rug whenever Mary wants.  While they wait for Pa, the girls sing for lack of light.  You can tell things are getting really bad when Ma insists Laura go to bed without washing the dishes.
The next day repeats the monotony of the one before it, only this time Laura sews the rag rug.  Same old story on the next day, but on the third afternoon the blizzard abruptly stops and Pa heads over to Fuller’s to find out how the neighbors weathered the storm.  He doesn’t have good news — there’s a rumor that the Tracy train is ensconced in thirty plus feet of snow.  A group of men will head out to dig it out, a task Ma insists “won’t take very long in pleasant weather.”