the misseldines

We had some nasty weather this past week and weekend, you guys! School was cancelled Wednesday and Thursday, but then my kids were back in school on Friday. And on Friday night my mom was calling worried about what weather the weekend would bring. So I looked it up and yeah, it looked bad. So on Saturday I planned on going grocery shopping before the storm hit, but it kept getting put off and I took a shower and fed the baby, and it was 2:00pm before I left. It had been snowing all day and the wind was terrible.

The first clue that I shouldn't have gone was the snow drifts in our driveway and around the car making it almost impossible to get in the car, but not all the way impossible.  I opened the car door, pushing the snow away with the bottom of the door, and hopped inside. I made at least five different attempts to leave the driveway before I finally made it out to the street.

I made it to town just fine, even though the roads were covered in ice and snow and snow drifts were everywhere. The wind was blowing the snow sideways and it was hard to see. I had taken Samantha with me, so once we got to the grocery store, we ran inside and got what we needed and ran back outside to find that the storm had gotten worse. The car was covered in snow and the wind was pelting us with a mixture of snow and ice pellets.

We had to stop at the other grocery store in town to buy Carter's bread which the first store was out of, so I left the car running and Sami in the car and ran inside for a minute. While I was inside Trevor called. Sami answered and he told her he was worried and we needed to get home now. I got back in the car and Sami told me what Trevor had said. We had been gone at that point for 45 minutes.

I was honestly super worried too. The wipers kept getting iced up. The wind kept bringing giant packs of snow across the road to where I couldn't see diddly-squat, and the snow drifts were getting deep.

At this point I was back on the road and called my mom who had asked me to call her on my way home. We almost got stuck on the railroad crossing which had turned into a deep drift. We started down the highway towards home. My conversation with my mom was her asking why we hadn't gone shopping the night before and me exclaiming every few seconds that "I can't see!!!! Oh wait, I can now.". And then about a mile from the turn off to our house this really weird thing happened. I'm going to attempt to explain it.

You know when you go to the car wash and it has those big fluffy mop looking things? When those touch your car,  you know the sound that it makes? It's not loud, but like a soft boom sound? Okay. So I'm driving down the road, and this big gust of wind comes and I hear that soft boom sound and am literally engulfed in white. I have just literally been buried by a giant snow drift that the wind was carrying across the highway. It stopped my car dead in its tracks. I got off the phone with my mom and got out. I couldn't see any cars coming. I was buried in snow on the passenger side. I got back in the car and tried reverse. Nothing. Tried drive. Nothing. Literally stuck in the middle of a highway with the possibility of being run over any moment by a car. Joy. I was panicked and yelled at Samantha to call dad and tell him what happened and to come right away. She was bawling by the way. She called him while I was running around the car trying to assess the situation. What the crap was I going to do? A car passed coming the opposite direction. They galked but didn't stop. Then a miracle. A car coming slowly. I waved my arms. It stopped. Two males got out.

I'll make this next part short and spare all the details. It took about 10 minutes and a backhoe and one of the guys driving my car, but they got me out. So back on the road I went. Trevor had been on the phone with Samantha that whole time and he was waiting to come. I'm so grateful to those guys! Then down our road I went, dodging all the snow drifts I could and feeling the car bottoming out on the ones I couldn't.

Finally I made it home, and I could see Trevor outside waiting for me. I turned into our driveway and heard the familiar bottoming out sound. This time the car stopped moving. I was half-way in the street and half-way out of the street.

Again the fast-forward version: Two more guys stopped to help. 15 minutes and three shovels and three boards later and I was parked in the driveway.

Inside the house we discovered that Sami and I had whiplash.

And that is the story of how I decided that I will never drive in the snow again.