Missing my connection

This is going around on Facebook this morning.  Hilarious.

Well now.  Where to begin?

First things first: It snowed last night.  A LOT.  We woke up to about 14-inches of new snow.  Not surprisingly, school was closed.  Also not surprisingly, the girls were up earlier than usual.  There's no need to waste a free day.

Oh, and we celebrated with waffles.  

Then the girls decided to go outside and explore the world.  We don't actually have what you would call snow clothes, but they managed to find some old snow pants and gloves and such.  Johanna decided to wear her school shoes instead of looking for boots.

She lasted ten minutes before losing her shoe somewhere near our slide:

Shouldn't be too hard to find a shoe out there.

So yadda yadda yadda, I get ready to go to work.  I wasn't too worried about the state of the union.  I  figured our road would be the worst of it--the snow plow has been past once, so we have exactly one lane open for use.  That's sort of exciting.

I got out of the driveway and onto the main road okay.  I slipped a little, but I knew it would be bad.  I got to the highway and thought, wow, this isn't all that great either, but what the heck.  And I pulled out.  And knew I'd made a big mistake.  But there wasn't a place to safely turn around, so I just kept going--in second gear, mind you--and hoping for the best.  Eventually I'd be able to turn around.  Right?

See?  That's how much snow we have.

About 1/2 mile into my journey, a snow plow comes up behind me.  In the other lane.  Like maybe he's going to pass.  He was going fast, and I was sort of pissed, if you want to know the truth--that he was going faster than I wanted to go and that had I been just a few minutes later I'd have been behind instead of in front.

So yes, I panicked a little, and the next thing I know, I'm sliding.  And sure, I'd been sliding all over the place, but this time I knew I was out of control.  I over-corrected and did the exact opposite of what Dad taught me when I was learning to drive, and the next thing I know, I'm in a snow bank and the snow plow and the two cars behind it are driving past.

Thanks.  Appreciate it.

So I call Eric and I'm totally freaking out.  I felt like crying, especially when he didn't answer.  So I'm all blah blah blah, freaking out, blah!  And then I called Stacey and was like, hey!  I'm in a snow bank!  I'm not coming into work today!  And then I called my father-in-law, who came to rescue me.

My father-in-law is the best.

In the meantime, a couple of people stopped to help.  The first was a guy named Will Smith (that made me laugh--he said he gets that a lot) who was very nice.  I thanked him and said I was okay because my father-in-law was coming with a big ol' truck and a plow and the works.  Then a woman and her teenage son stopped.  That restored my faith in humanity, after the whole snow plow thing (and okay, I probably sound like a whiner going on about that.  I can take responsibility for my own actions.  I'm just still a little bitter), that strangers were actually interested in my welfare.  So thanks, Will Smith and anonymous lady and son.  I appreciate it more than I can say.  And so does my mommy.

So it took a chain and some major tire spinning, but somehow my father-in-law got me out of that bank.  He was like, you can go on to work now, but I was like, hell no, I'm going home.  So he followed me.  And I'm glad he did, because I could not get up our wimpy little driveway incline, so he put the car in the garage for me.

And then I called Eric, who answered this time, to tell him I was out of the ditch and back home.  And then I made myself a strong cup of coffee, and put in some of my Ghirardelli Unsweetened Cocoa Powder / sugar and made a mocha-like substance that is almost too sweet, but damn!

What a day.

The girls are back outside now, Johanna in boots this time.  What's the percentage they can find her shoe?  I tend to be optimistic about all the wrong things, so I don't know.

P.S. Eric and I watched the Custer special on PBS last night.  Here's a synopsis: Custer was a hothead, and then he died.  I just saved you two hours.  You're welcome.  (We went to Custer's Last Stand on a family vacation in 1986.  CREEPY.)

Jets Overhead, Heading for Nowhere.  Because that's where it turned out I was headed.  I actually got this song free on iTunes last year.  I love the ending: "Standing at the station / looking at the map. Starting for a moment / just before the crash."  I have a whole video for this song in my head, just FYI.