5 posts tagged “ice storm”
When I walked on campus this morning, it was obvious the University had not even started ice removal. Still, I had to walk somewhere to get to work. That somewhere at one point was over a massive ice sheet camouflaged by a dusting of snow. I skidded about ten feet and then went up, arms and legs flailing, and then ass-down. I carry a big backpack* which mostly padded my fall, but once down and laughing uncontrollably, I was like a turtle flipped on its shell. I lay there kicking in the air and laughing as people walked around me, more cautiously now. No one stopped to offer me help up, which I desperately needed. I wonder, if I'd been crying and whimpering, would someone have given me a hand?
* It contains: gym clothes & shoes, my breakfast, my lunch, my coffee mug, and two giant bottles of water, owing to the perhaps carcinogenic, and most assuredly foul-tasting and looking, water available in Brain Tumor Hall.
A little taste of our ice storm. Not as tasty as an ice cream cone, but it makes a cool banner if you want it.
After several weeks rejection-free, I fell off the wagon. Two rejections awaited me at home this evening. With an ice storm coming, though, there wasn't a lot of time to linger around moping.
I scurried off to the grocery store to pick up some essentials in case I can't get out tomorrow and in case I lose power. The best part is seeing what other people think of as pre-storm essentials. I picked up the truly essential: cat litter, cereal and milk. If nothing else, I figure I don't have to cook cereal and I'm not going to have any trouble keeping the milk cold, even without electricity.
The family in line in front of me was buying: a case of Coke, a case of beer (got the fluids squared away), a bag of charcoal (in case you need to start a fire to cook), oh, and about a dozen frozen pizzas. Standing in line, I kept trying to visualize what cooking a frozen pizza on a barbecue grill would be like. At the library--no way I was getting stuck without some reading material--I saw the grocery store family's counterpart. They were checking out a bunch of DVD's, which will be great if we just get iced in. Useless in a blackout.
Normally, my preferred metaphor for stupidity is "not the sharpest knife in the drawer," but today...today deserved something special. It started off cold and windy, and then it took a turn for the colder, windier and sleety. As the day wore on, it just got worse. I usually walk to and from work, but at quittin time, hubby called and asked if I wanted a ride. What the heck? It was nasty and icy, maybe I would like to careen around in a two-ton bumper car.
So, we scurried over to the parking lot together, hopped into the car, started the engine, and then...looked out the windshield. Except we couldn't see out, because after a day of sleet, it was completely iced over. Guess what? We spent the last six years in Florida. While there we bought and sold several cars, including the cars that we'd originally driven from Kansas six years ago. With the kind of reckless abandon you only get with youth and moves to Florida, we hadn't kept the ice scrapers when we sold those cars. Morons. It's nearly December in Kansas and only sitting there staring at that wall of white did we realize the magnitude of our mistake. We'd moved back to Kansas. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Luckily, my husband is as destructive as he is resourceful. (Thanks, United States Marine Corps.) The center console of his car has a rather useless little cubbyhole, with an equally useless little door. Hubby snapped the useless door off, and proceeded to use it to scrape the windshield.
Our first stop on the way home? To buy some ice scrapers. And a snow shovel. And some mittens. Stupid.
