light snow

today has been a lot o' fun, so i thought i'd share about it. i slept in pretty late because i made the mistake of deciding to re-read the siren at about 1:45 last night and didn't go to bed until 5 this morning. i woke up a little after 1 in the afternoon (i'm a little [ok, a lot] embarrassed to admit i slept that late) and peeked out my window to discover little white bunches of happiness floating everywhere in the sky and starting to build up on the ground.

this story might make you a little nervous to read, so i want to start it by telling how it ends: today tori and i drove in the snow/ice (or as the weather people call it, "light snow") and made it home fine.

even though it was snowing, tori and i set out to go to franklin (south of nashville) so she could go to a fabric store there. driving there was no problem, everybody went slow and the roads really weren't slippy at the time. after the fabric store we also made stops at marshall's and kroger, which are all in the same shopping area. we weren't out for too long, but it snowed the whole time we were there and it turned dark. when we finally got done shopping and decided to leave it took us forever to get home!

most people were traveling even slower than earlier, and we were going so slow that we got passed a few times. i couldn't begin to count how many emergency vehicles went by us or how many cars we saw on the side of the road. it made the situation a little bit scary (i drove the whole day) but i knew i had to stay calm and focus on getting home instead of worrying. the whole time i was thinking "go slow. keep a firm grip on the steering wheel. watch for ice. watch for cars skidding. don't slam on the breaks when a car starts skidding. don't slam on the breaks if MY car starts skidding. don't steer the opposite way if i start sliding, just let it happen." it was a bit of a tense ride home, but it really went smoothly until we got the road we live right off of, briley parkway.

on the way home i mentioned to tor that getting chinese food from the joint right down the street from us would be fun tonight, so we decided to stop by before going home. we're literally pulling up to the red light on briley that we turn off of to hit up the restaurant and go home on when we skid. we started going towards the car in front of us and i managed to barely turn the wheel a little to make us go into the empty lane beside us. it really wasn't a big deal, at this point i had been prepared for it to happen for almost an hour. we pulled off the road and went in to eat and decide what the best way home would be. we have two options to get to our apartment from briley: go down and up a really big hill on our back road that we usually take, or to keep following briley around, which has an inclined bridge. at first we decided on secret option number three, which was leaving our car at the restaurant and walking down and up the big hill and down the road to our apartment.

after some more talking and watching cars drive by without problem on briley, we decided to go that way. right before we reach the inclined bride we see a couple of cars skidding, and then start doing it as well. we're going all of 5 mph, so it happens for a second and stops. but at this point we're stopped on an icy incline - i try a couple of times to push the gas but we accept that there's no way we can get going forward. so then i decide to try and roll backwards little by little when there are no cars in sight. we move all of five feet and then abandon that idea too. finally someone pulls up behind us (which totally freaked us out, we thought they were about to crash into us) and asked if we wanted help. then someone else pulls up in front of us and asks if we need help. (we think the people in the two trucks were friends, but we're really not sure) the guys talk about pulling us up the hill and then get to work attaching a chain to the front of our car. while they're doing that tori and i look at each other and start going "is this a good idea? i don't know about this. what if he skids?" he seemed pretty confident and we told him twice how icy it was and that cars have been going everywhere, so we decided it was our only option and that we need to just do it and hope its ok.

like i said at the beginning, this story ends fine. he took us to the top of the hill and unchained us right at the road we needed to turn on. being pulled was the height of my stress this evening - i was so afraid that when he started stopping i wouldn't be able to and we would bump into the back of him. i was comforted by the thought that if i couldn't stop it would be just that, a bump. we weren't going fast enough for us to really run into his truck and do any damage. we drove down yet another dangerously icy road and finally made it home.

thankfully i got a call at about 10:30 from one of my bosses telling me that our preschool will be closed tomorrow. the whole way back i kept telling tori "i'll look at the road in the morning, but if it's like this i'm NOT going!" after my boss apologized for calling so late i told her i was glad to hear we would be closed since i was stuck in my neighborhood. i have a pretty good plan for tomorrow that involves riding some object down the really big hill, walking up the other side to dunkin donuts, getting a sandwich and hot chocolate, then coming back home the same way i got there! hopefully it'll be a fun snow day!!

-meghan

p.s. typing the word "hill" so many times made me feel like i was talking about hillary, who is off having non-dangerous fun in alabama. hey hill, hope you're having a good time :)