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.

As I was driving to work the other day I saw a sign in front of a store that something like “A mile driven is two in winter.”  I don’t really know what that meant to the people in the landscaping establishment, but it struck a chord with me.  Seems like many things are just twice as difficult this winter.  The snow came sooner and is sticking around, it’s doubly cold here for this time of year.  The economy is frightening, and most of our income is attached to General Motors which increases the fear factor.  And of course I’m working two jobs, something I’ve never done before.  It’s difficult to find a space where things feel normal, happy, comfortable.   Frankly I miss being inside the safe, sheltered, and to be honest, slightly dilusional world of grad school.  Cause the real world is pretty darn difficult right now.  Each mile we cover, so far this winter, feels like we’ve just run two.  Here’s hoping things begin to look up once we get to 2009.

Meanwhile…I’m off to work, I had the weekend off, but they called for backup help at the bookstore.  Can’t wait to face all those friendly shoppers!  Well.  Some of them are friendly.  But lots of them also look like they just ran two miles to make it the one mile into the store.  If you know what I mean.

I’ve been watching developments in India (and as I write that I can hear in my mind my Indian professors and graduate assistants say the word “development” with their own unique pronunciation) and at first I thought, as many probably did, that these events were unrelated to me, far away, not my worry.  But the more I listened and the more I became engaged with the story, the more I realized I knew people with families and friends in India, and I didn’t know where they were or if they were OK.  And that made the whole horrific thing more real, more tragic and much more scary.

One of the librarians I work for is Indian, and just last Tuesday she was talking about a trip back to India, so she must have family still there.  My sister-in-law has friends in India, that she recently visited, though she assures me they are all safe in another city.  And my second semester of graduate school, January 2007, I had an Indian graduate assistant that taught a discussion section I attended.  I suddenly remembered him as I listened to the Indian comandos describe their search inside the bloody  hotel, the accent as he spoke in English exactly the same as the graduate student explaining algebra to me.  I know that “T” went home to India in the middle of the semester because his father died, so obviously he has family there as well.  I don’t even remember his last name which I’d need to find him to inquire if his family is safe, but I think of him now and sincerely hope they are.

It’s sad to think that only by recognizing that I know people who might be directly affected by the terrorism in India did I begin to pay attention.  The world is small, and we are all closer than we think to events everywhere else.  What is frightening to them should be frightening to us.  Is frightening to us.  Because they are us, and we are them, and it is only by grace that we have not faced similar atrocities in our own neighborhoods.