That Thundersnow Business

Yesterday I was planning my blog at lunch.  It was going to be silly and goofy and play on the fact that nothing exciting ever happens in my life. 

Whoops!

Around noon MamaH called to say that the forecast changed, be careful, government is out early, yada yada, TELL YOUR HUSBAND, be careful, snow, snow, ice, snow.  (I was multi-tasking - that's what I heard).  So I called J-Man to tell him to tell his boss he has a nagging wife who wants him to leave at 3 and be safe on he roads. He told me that's not how it works, and then boom, it's 3pm.

The rain started coming down hard and I began packing my laptop bag.  And packing.  And packing.  I needed to take my whole desk home, obviously, in case I had to work from home.

And thank heaven bff-KB came to the rescue, offering to pick me up.  I should've been ashamed, I know, to let her.  But I really really didn't want to walk the ten blocks to the metro, depend on the metro, wait for the apartment shuttle, trust the smirking shuttle driver etc.

So I bought her cupcakes from Bittersweet and prepared to be in her debt.  Thankfully bff-KB needed a break from studying for the bar, so we both won.  Kinda.

After my dear, sweet, altruistic friend KB picked me up from the swanky Old Town office I had her just take me to her place so that she wouldn’t be on the road too long.  One quick detour to Giant and we were safely on her serene, snow-blanketed street.  The snow was falling crazy fast, but KB lives at most 3 miles from my apartment so it was perfect. 

Our first of many adventures was the driveway.  Oh driveway...  we got stuck at the bottom and after trying to rock the car back and forth through some serious forward/reverse/forward action, put on our 'girl' caps and said screw it, leaving the car barely pulled in. The men would be home soon.  They could feel like men and fix it.

 So we waited on J-Man, who clearly had listened to me like I listened to my mom: barely. He'd let the competitive work environment get the best of him and stayed more than an hour after I'd suggested.

So we waited on bff-KB's husband to come back from, wait for it, the gym!  That's right.  The gym.  His phone and wedding ring placed carefully on the dining room table, he had been home in the snow, and ventured back out.

Can we take a moment and wonder about our husbands?  And if you're the praying type, can you say a retroactive prayer for them?  And for their wives?

There we were, standing in the foyer, while lamenting our husbands, when we heard a loud creak.  Imagine CRRRR-EEEE-EEE-KKK-K-K.  Wondering what we saw?

That’s not impressive?  Here’s the view from the street:

 

We started sending texts and taking pictures and repeating a lot of "what the heck" and "there's a TREE in the yard."  I even learned how to email pictures from my iPhone just to be able to send them to J-Man and scare my parents.  J-Man was averaging 8mph, he deserved a distraction for one of the thousands of standstill moments.  I promise, we don't text and drive

Adventure 5 (numbers 2-4 were clearly the moment the tree fell and our subsequent shrieks) was imagining what KB's hubby would say when he returned from the gym.  We couldn't call since he left his phone when he went to the gym! 

Mr-KB came home and was very thankful that the tree only barely scraped the front window and missed the car by mere inches (thank goodness we didn’t know how to drive well enough to get the car farther up the driveway!).  Maybe someone had been praying for us.

We kept waiting on J-Man.  And waiting.  And waiting.  Every 20 minutes we'd check in. Eventually he called to say that, after nearly 3 hours driving he was stuck about three miles away.  The car would barely budge.  He’s a Seattle boy, it’s a little Volvo, I was starting to imagine him in his suit and dress shoes sleeping in the frozen car.  

Adventure number something or other bff-KB's power started going in and out.  This was seriously putting a kink in my scouring the NBC website to find if our pictures had made the storm-center, snow-gawking image fest.  We started to think we would sleep in the cold too. 

Insert general uneasiness on all parts

J-Man needed new encouragement so I had Papa-H call him too. I had plenty of optimism left, but it was clear he needed some tough man love.  After about 20 minutes, some other random beefy guy started helping J-Man too by calling him a bitch and pushing the car.

Tough Man Love

Ok, he probably didn't call him a bitch.  But I know J-Man, and sometimes you gotta play dirty to get him out of a rut

He says he didn’t stop the car again until he got to all the way to the house.  Our power held out and when he arrived I hugged him like I did after he drove across the country.  Like I had thought I'd never see him again. Like I loved him silly.  Like someone should've told me to man up too.

Thank goodness J-Man left when he did though.  A recently hired coworker of his succumbed to peer pressure to “work harder” and ended up unable to leave the parking lot and go home to anyone. Another coworker found him like this at 8am.

When it was all said and done, J-Man and I had enjoyed a crazy adventuresome evening capped off with a mediocre comedy and a cozy sleep in KB's guest room.  

We thanked our lucky stars to have friends that are as good as family so close by.  

Late morning, we shoveled out King Henry Zebra, hopped inside and risked life and limb to make it home to our snuggies, t-shirts, and a day of working from home.  The roads were already clear, mocking us and our prior evening

Looks like I had a story after all.