Last night I worked until 12:30 a.m. at the bookstore. Today I was supposed to work 12-5 p.m. at the library and 6-12:30 a.m at the bookstore again. The good news is that working those long hours yesterday wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The bad news is that I was still exhausted by the time I got home around 1 a.m. By that time we were under a major storm warning, and it started to snow about 4 this morning. By 9 a.m. we had 5 or 6 inches on the ground. I’d take Katie out and within a half hour or so you couldn’t even see that we had been outside. I called the library and asked how the roads were out in the real world, as we live on back country roads and I hadn’t even seen a car go by this morning. They said the major roads were passable if you went slow, and the library was open, so just before 11 a.m. I left for what is usually a 30 minute commute, hoping to get there by the start of my noon shift. Right.
None of the back roads were plowed and I slowly followed someone’s tracks, the snow scraping the under carriage of the car. Up and down hills I crept, driving in the middle of the road, hoping to get to the top of each hill. When someone was coming the other way I’d edge toward the side of the road, but if it was a 4 wheel truck I figured they were on their own to get past me. Once out to a main road I was relieved, but only for a moment. The freeway entrance ramp was completely drifted over, so I couldn’t get on to head north. And now I was going the wrong way to take other back roads. There was nowhere to turn around as nothing was plowed. I edged my way over to Holly, about 10 miles west of me, crept through town and headed “around the block” back out to the freeway on a different road. By the time I actually got onto the freeway, one exit north of where I had initially tried, I had spent 40 minutes and had progressed about 8 miles north toward my goal. I called the office and left a message on my boss’s voice mail that I was on my way but would be late.
The freeway was passable, but very scary. You couldn’t see the lanes, and cars were everywhere, including in the ditch. Big semi’s were going pretty slow, but it was too frightening to pass them. Eventually I got to Flint. It was already close to noon. I called the office again and spoke to a secretary and told her I was probably 1/2 an hour away still. She said OK. Eventually I crept up the exit ramp, only two miles from work. My cell rang, it was my husband. The library had called to tell him that they were closing and I didn’t have to come into work. I can’t print here the words that I said. But you can imagine.
I made my way across the freeway bridge and crept down the on ramp and headed south. The weather got worse, there were times of almost white-out when the wind was blowing the snow so hard. I couldn’t see any lanes, but I knew I was near the shoulder because my tires would periodically pick up the rumble strip and hum. I was at the back of maybe 3 or 4 pickup trucks and SUVs, all moving very slowly, maybe 15-20 miles per hour. That was fine by me. We were sort of all over the road, each following the other’s tire tracks. And then, out of the snow behind me I see in my rear view mirror a white semi truck barreling down the road. I thought surely he’ll slow down when he sees us. But he didn’t. He moved into the left land, sort of, and we were, sort of, in the right lane. I moved over further, into heavy snow and slowed down, he barely made it past me, the guy in the pickup truck in front of me just moved a few inches to the right and out of the way, and the truck in front of him did the same, then the SUV at the head of our caravan. They all barely missed being clipped by the big rig as it flew by us and then disappeared into the blowing white snow ahead of us. I thought to myself, “he’s going to kill someone.” Then a big Lexus SUV flew by me too. “Idiots” I thought. About 2 miles down the road our little caravan crawled past the white bigrig, jacknifed in the ditch. Oh well. At least he didn’t roll it, hit anyone, or cause anyone else to go off the road. Idiot. A mile or so further, the big Lexus was spun out into the ditch too. I have no sympathy for either of them, though I’m glad no one got hurt.
All told it was a pretty horrible drive I made for no apparent reason. When I finally got home I called the bookstore and asked if they were busy, they said no, and that it was OK if I didn’t want to come in. I didn’t want to, so I spent the afternoon playing with Katie in the snow. She loves the snow! Tomorrow I will take the 4 Wheel Drive truck into the bookstore where I work most of the day. I’m sure we’ll be busy.
I’m grateful I made it safe and sound home. I measured the snow in our driveway when I got home and we had 10 inches, and it was still snowing. Don’t know what we ended up with, maybe a bit over that. I have to say someone was looking out for me several times during the trip. I was concerned that I wouldn’t make it up the exit ramp here at home, but about a mile from the exit a county snow plow appeared, and I followed him. He took the ramp, and I followed him all the way to the top. Too bad he went the other way at the top and I had to get my car through his plow leavings. But it all ended well.
Ah…life in the midwest in December.
I spent today at a small rural library. I was the lone staff person there for most of the day, and in some respects I had been nervous about that. But I remembered the first time I worked the reference desk during grad school alone. I found out then that the world did not come to an end if I couldn’t answer something right then. (Check out my blog entries June 1 and June 2, 2007 where I talk about my first solo reference desk experience.) So today I figured that I’d be OK, and I was. In fact it was rather nice spending time in a building built in the 1800’s, with sun shining through the big dusty windows. Between patrons I had the opportunity to read a bit of my own book, something pretty much unheard of in the library world. We are always surrounded by books, but we never have time to read!
Change Is Hard 