Adventures on Ice

This morning, I woke up to a thin sheet of ice covering EVERYTHING.

Well, literally, I woke up to a cat jumping onto my belly. But that's neither here nor there. I checked my phone and saw that I had received a message from my mom, warning me that the roads were "really icy." However, this was coming from the woman who worries about me driving when there is barely an inch of rapidly melting snow on the ground. So I thanked her and told her I would be careful, and then went about my business. I'm currently house-sitting for a family, taking care of their dog, Elsie, and cat, Snowy. Elsie is very excitable -- she loves being let out, so when I opened the door this morning she rocketed out the door, skidded down the steps and landed, paws splayed, at the bottom. Seconds later, Snowy rushed out. She made it out a little more gracefully by simply skipping the steps, but at the bottom waved her paws about wildly to keep upright.

 I watched them and giggled a little bit -- silly animals, didn't they see the ice all over the steps? Then I felt a little bit bad for laughing at them, but to be honest, it was quite a funny display. I carefully side-stepped down the steps, arrogantly ignoring the hand-rail. Upon reaching the bottom, I gave a sigh of relief, then promptly slipped and fell. If Elsie and Snowy had voices, and if they had been paying attention to anything but their food bowls, I'm sure they would have been laughing.

The rest of the morning passed smoothly enough -- de-icing my car was a bit of a struggle, but it was kind of worth it to be able to slice through the ice with the scraper. I felt a little bit like insert superhero-who-can-slice-through-ice. It was pretty sweet, let me tell you.

Upon arriving home, I realized that my car was simply not going to make it up the driveway. My car struggles up the driveway at the best of times, and while I can coax it up the driveway in the snow using 4 wheel drive and a bit of luck, it absolutely refused to even attempt to tackle the ice.

I parked in the street and stood at the bottom of our driveway, hands on my hips, wondering how exactly I was going to do this. The ice didn't look too bad from there, and just because my car couldn't make it up was no reason I shouldn't be able to do it. Today's newspaper lay sadly on the left edge of the driveway, about 7 feet above the base of the driveway, so I decided I would hike up and heroically rescue it from its icy prison.

I took one step up the driveway -- and promptly slid back down. I tried side-stepping, running, taking large steps, taking small steps, skipping, jumping, cartwheeling, swearing, bear walking, penguin sledding, and a brief stint walking on my hands, but to no avail. The newspaper sat there, just daring me to try again.

"Well, FINE then," I snapped. This obviously wasn't going to work. After accepting a handful of mail from our amused and relieved mailman ("Hey, Downton Abbey came in! Sweet!"), I turned to the snowbanks lining each side of my driveway, each towering over two feet. I sighed, and resignedly plunged into the snow.

I finally made it to the house 5 hours later (or something like that), soaking wet up to the knees. I stood in the kitchen, staring out at the driveway, which stood twinkling innocently at me in the smog light. There at the base sat the newspaper, still gleaming with ice, and probably amusement at my struggles. I glared at it and stuck out my tongue.

See if I care. I'll just do the crossword online.

Take that, newspaper.