Crashing Through The New Year

Today has been quite the coaster ride and it’s left me a little dizzy.  I hope it was a fluke and not a precursor to each day of this new year, because while I love excitement, I can only handle so much in day, much less a year.

This afternoon one of our neighbors threw open the back door, stuck his head in and yelled “John fell.  You better come.”

I grabbed the shoes closest to me, a pair of flip-flops, and slipped them on.  Today was in the single digits and snowing.  All. Day. Long.  Of course it actually felt like negative numbers out there, numbers never intended for southern toe exposure.

I ran outside and found my husband face down in the snow.  He couldn’t move.

Finally he mustered the strength to get up, but it was extremely painful.  I saw the pain all over his face, in his eyes, and maybe even in the bad word that slipped from his lips.

He came inside and the snow began to melt away, but the pain stayed.  He has a bad back anyway, injured a few years ago when a set of job stairs collapsed under him.  Then again when his ladder slipped on the ice and he took a hard fall.

We headed straight to the emergency room, the place my husband works.  The nurses and doctors had quite the time with him and a CT scan showed he merely re-injured old wounds, so we left – him with a blackened back and me with some pictures.

Of course, the truck was completely covered in snow.

We started up the truck and I began removing snow.  It took about sixty-five seconds before my gloved fingers went numb.  My toes weren’t far behind.  Then I realized we locked the keys, both sets, in the truck while it was running.

Ya, imagine a blizzard with a warmed up truck and no way to get inside.  Unfortunately our truck doesn’t have a back slider window.  We tried everything, but nothing worked.  If it was eighty degrees and sunshiny, we would have found a way into that truck.  You know how it works.

We broke a small window in the back.

Do you know duck tape doesn’t really stick to a frozen vehicle?  It’s true.  If it’s too cold for duct tape, it’s probably too cold for humans.  I’m convinced.  Even the bunny came to live inside for a few days.  It’s that cold.

Finally we were on our way home.  After a few slip-n-slides and some window patching it was time to get the truck up into the driveway for the night.

Ya, that was a good idea if it were eighty degrees.

The truck wasn’t getting up the driveway.  It was stubborn to a fault.  A neighbor came out and began pushing, but still nothing.  The windowless truck is now sitting in the street, right in the way of the snow plow.  By morning it will have a ticket.  Of course it will, because it’s only legal to park in the street when it’s eighty degrees and not snowing.

So, ya, I hope today, this second day of the new year, is a fluke.

For now I’m raising a roll of duct tape and wishing you all a safe and happy third day of 2014.