(SN)O(W)MG

It rained for two daaaaaaays which, I gotta tell you, did not help my mood.

Then! While Minnie was at her gym class and I was grading papers in the lobby, I looked up to see SNOW MUCH SNOW. 

I thought about grabbing Minnie and driving straight to Coop’s school, even though it was only 1:20, and he is in school until 4:10, but I figured I could wait like 35 minutes until the end of class and things would still be ok enough for me to get him.

BIG MISTAKE, guys.

Zero visibility. Huge, fat snowflakes piling up on top of 2 days of puddles and slick roads. I realized there was no way I would get to Coop’s school and back home before Dorothy got home at 2:30, and she would have no way of knowing where we were. So. Minnie and I sloooooowly slooowly slowly drove home, and by the time we got to our neighborhood, my poor sad minivan could not handle the snow and slippery uphill road at all, and I got totally stuck. Luckily, I could veer into a dead end baby street that might someday be a real street but for now is a tiny little short street where some guy usually parks his boat (but thankfully there was no boat).

Minnie and I walked the block or so home and got totally soaked and frozen, but that was the least of my concerns. All I could think about was Cooper and how the heck he was going to get home. I called the high school and excused Harry and Jack from the last hour or so of class, figuring they should avoid parking lot snafus if possible and texted them to come home. Then I called Coop’s school and explained to the front desk that he has never ridden the bus before and would need help finding his route and stop but that my car was stuck in the snow and I couldn't come get him. Then I asked if his high school brother could pick him up, and the front desk woman said he could and that she was worried thinking about him figuring out the bus for the first time in a blizzard. ME TOO, SISTER.  Sooooo, I called Harry and asked him and Jack to go get Coop, which seemed like the best bad option.

Then, I just sort of paced the house and stalked the boys on Life360. Harry got to the middle school no problem, but then they got stuck twice on the way back to our house. I called the police non-emergency number since they were in a line of stuck cards, but before anyone came, Harry saw a private plow on its way to a neighborhood and maneuvered out behind him. He was able to follow the plow to a more traveled road and made it back to our house pretty quickly after that. 

The boys were excited to tell me about how they almost crashed at an intersection when they couldn’t stop (OMG OMG OMG), but that was the only terrifying detail. The Prius has always been top notch in snow— I think because it is so low to the ground. My Toyota minivans were always OK but not great, but the Honda Odyssey? IS TERRIBLE. Just high enough to be super wind blown and slippery. And if there’s ANY snow, the tires get zero traction. I hate it, basically.

Evening activities (tennis, drama, speech team, dance, diving) were all cancelled, so the 6 of us had a super cozy night at home. Ben had to stay late for a work dinner an hour away and made it home around 10, when the roads were actually better than they were between 2:30-4:30. He was also able to get my car and bring it home. Harry and I walked over to try after the boys’ harrowing commute, but we made it worse by getting the back half of the van into the middle of a busy-ish road and then some nice neighbors helped us push it back to where it was before Harry and I tried to rescue it (and we all almost flattened Coop, who was digging out a tire and didn’t know we’d be accelerating).

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL THOUGH

EVEN THE CITY PLOW GOT STUCK

YAY SNOW! I can say that TODAY when everything is slushy and drivable.

Where my car spent the storm— I took a pic of its little outline on my way home from dropping Minnie off today