Shovelling Out of a Winter Wonderland

Winter entered Northeastern Oklahoma with a bang, and seeing how it's usually somewhere comfortably in the 50s this time of year, we were sorely unprepared. As for me and my house, that means we've all been stuck at home since Thursday.

It made for a pretty nice vacation, if you leave out the digging and the stressing out about whether my husband would still have a job when he finally made it back to work for those tightwad Scrooges that employ him. Of course, EVERYBODY who lives in that house was home all four days, so opportunities for me to jump on my mom's computer were nil; and as I've yet to learn how to tell my husband to leave me alone for a few hours and let me write (plus the whole inconvenient computer access situation at my house--Lord, how I need to break down and get myself a laptop), once again I went an entire extended weekend without writing a single word. But also once again, I got a lot of knitting done whilst snuggled in bed with Matt and our little family of furballs. I finished the front of his sweater, made good progress on my S-I-L's scarf, and completed myself a pair of mittens that I'll have to show you later. My hands are cramping, but at least they're warm.

But it wasn't all knitting and sipping hot cocoa and keeping cozy. Friday I spent about two hours on a botched attempt to dig my car out, trying to make it so that Matt could at least make his Saturday shift and I could make up some time at the office. After I about killed myself moving snow around to no avail, I gave up and decided to see if any of it would melt over the weekend. It didn't, so I ended up spending the better part of yesterday finishing the job.

We finally managed to get the car out of the driveway by mid-afternoon, so my mom and I went to town to stock up on groceries. We did fine--once we got out of our neighborhood, the highways were okay to drive on--until we got back home, where mom (who was driving) backed into a snow bank and got my car stuck again. Sigh. That was when the following conversation commenced.

Mom: [After smoking up my car with the smell of burning rubber] Oh, dear. Here, you take the wheel. I'm going to have to get out and push.

Me: What? No you're not.

Mom: Yes I am! How else are we going to get out of here?

Me: Um, I get out and push while you steer?

Mom: You can't do it. You have a bad back and I'm stronger than you.

Me: Mother! You're 64 years old! You are not stronger or in better shape than me and I am NOT going to make my 64 year old mother get out in the snow and push my car! THIS is why you have high blood pressure and you are NOT going to give yourself a stroke on my watch and--

Mom: OKAY! You push.

Which, I did, and we made enough headway to be able to clear more snow and ice out of the car's way (another hour's worth of shoveling), and I finally got my mom to go inside and let me maneuver the car to a spot where we'd be able to drive out okay in the morning.

So I'm back at work today, with a very sore back and an aching everything else. Matt's back at work too, and I guess he would have called me by now if they fired him. Unless they're waiting till the end of his shift to do it, which would be typical, but I don't really think they're going to fire him. Meanwhile, I have a ton of catching up to do, so I'd better get started on it. I hope you guys had a safe and warm weekend devoid of any shovelling.