Snow Day!

OK, I guess it’s really an ice day, but I’ll take it. Unfortunately, I’m set up to work from home, so I’m not totally off the hook. It’s still fun working in my jammies though, and I haven’t decided if I’m going to shower today or not. Plus nobody else is at work either, so I’m getting about 550% fewer questions and requests, which means that the work I have to do is going a lot faster.

Yesterday would have been an ice day, but it was a company holiday anyway, so I got the day off regardless. The roads were bad in the morning, but Slag was determined to run a couple of errands and practice a little ice-driving yesterday afternoon, like I mentioned earlier. I forbade it.

Turns out I didn’t actually kick his ass, but I did stand in the doorway while he backed out of the garage, looking very menacing with my hands on my hips, going “Get back in the house this instant! You’re not going anywhere! The roads are icy and you’ll be killed!“

And as he backed down the driveway, “DO YOU HEAR ME?? I SAID GET BACK IN THIS HOUSE RIGHT NOW!”

And as he started off down the street, “I’M NOT JOKING WITH YOU! YOU’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE!”

And then he hit his remote and shut the garage door in my face. I retaliated by slamming the door on my way back into the house. So there. I guess I showed him.

But the roads were much improved by the time he left, so he didn’t get to do any ice driving. Ha! That’s what he gets for not listening to me.

We got even more sleet and freezing rain last night though. Now there’s about ¼ of an inch of ice on everything. Here’s a picture of my car covered in sleet and ice. Can you see that there are actual icicles hanging from the wheel well in the lower left corner of the picture?? (Anyone reading this who lives in northern climes is kindly requested to refrain from rolling his/her eyes out of their sockets.) This is a big deal around here.



To give you an idea of what I mean, a few years ago, I saw an interview with the guy who was in charge of highway maintenance for the entire state of Georgia or Alabama (I can’t remember which) just after a freak storm had dropped like 10 inches of snow onto the northern half of the state. The interviewer guy asked him, “How long do you think it will be before you have the major highways plowed and cleared?” And the guy answered, “Oh…..we don’t have a plow.”

Yeah. So. That’s pretty much the situation here. The two strategies we have for dealing with frozen water on the roadways are 1) sprinkling sand on the highway overpasses and 2) waiting for it all to melt. Since the temperature hasn’t risen above freezing yet today, nothing is melting just yet.

Which brings us to the exciting part of today’s story. Having missed out on the ice-driving yesterday, Slag was even more determined to drive in it today. I was equally more determined that he would not.

I knew I’d have to be sneaky, so I surprised him with a preemptive strike on his shoes. I did get one of them untied before he saw what I was doing and removed me from his ankle. I unzipped his jacket, yanked it halfway down his arms and yelled “You’re not going anywhere!” while he retied the shoe. I came back with an arm lock on the other leg and got the other shoe untied before he got annoyed and pushed me gently back onto the floor and held me at arms reach while I flailed at him and he retied the second shoe. I had lost the element of surprise. I knew I was beaten. I settled for flopping down flat on the floor and yelling “If you end up in the emergency room with every bone in your body broken, don’t call ME to come and get you!” at the ceiling as he left.

He just called me from the grocery store. What do you know, he made it there without being crushed to death in a multi-car pile-up. We didn’t get to go over the shopping list before he left, and he wanted to know if I needed anything. Yes please. A box of Frosted Mini-Wheats and a dozen eggs.

He said he’s going to find an empty parking lot on the way home to practice skid control or something. He better not break those damn eggs.