Merry Christmas!

We’ve had ghastly weather for over a week, but this morning when I opened the front door, I heard the glorious sound: drip-drip-drip.

So, at noon, my daughter and I raced to the grocery store so she could buy her brothers a present.  (She hadn’t remembered until today, apparently.  She’s six years old.)  Of course, I need important things like sour cream and black olives.

We have two vans–a normal mini-van and a Chevy cargo van which is 13 years old.  My husband drives the newer van to work, leaving the gigantic old van for me to motor around town.  I can finally park it between the white lines in a parking lot–a skill which took me a couple of years to master.  (That’s just pulling in straight.  I could never ever parallel park this behemoth.)

The last time I drove the big van was when it had started snowing a week ago.  It took me six tries to get backed out of my sloping driveway and then I slid all over my unplowed road.  Truly, driving this van on the snow is like trying to steer a living room on wheels–without brakes or steering wheel.  Or like motoring a boat on a stormy sea . . . with no rudder or oars.  Kinda scary.

I was confident today, though, because of the drip-drip-drip.  I had my teenagers shovel the snow from behind the van.  The funny thing was that they didn’t shovel as much as they raked and “broomed.”  Whatever.  As long as I didn’t have to contend with a snowbank before I even hit the road.

Our road was slippery, but once I hit the main road all was well. Hooray!

The parking lot at the grocery store was another story.  A bad story.  I had to park way out in the parking lot because it’s not easy to park an enormous van in a slushy snowy parking lot packed with a million last minute grocery shoppers.  Awesome, though, because I was out in the world and not at home without sour cream.  Then I stepped out of the van and into a deep puddle of melty slushy snow.  Pretty.

But we shopped.  We paid.  Then, back to the out in no-man’s-land.  I couldn’t push the cart to the van because of the icy slushy snow pack.  Instead, I carried the bags from the cart which sat pretty much in the middle of the parking lot.  I hurried, though, then returned to the cart and waited for an opening in traffic and backed out.

Only when I backed out, I couldn’t pull forward because I was stuck.  And a car was waiting for my parking spot.  I had to pull forward and try again.  But another car stopped to wait for me . . . and when I backed out, my tires spun, unable to get traction and I couldn’t move.  So I pulled forward again, gunned it, hoped to not hit the car behind me. . . and got stuck again.

After four or five tries and a little Christmas jeering (MOVE ALONG, PEOPLE!) I realized I could turn the opposite way.  So, I was able to exit the parking lot.  Hooray, hooray.  It’s the small things–like being able to drive backward and forward in my living-room-on-wheels that make me happy.

Anyway, what a long story without much of a point, but hey, Merry Christmas!  I hope you have a delightful day and that no one vomits in your house.  (Huh?  Where’d that come from?)