I've Got the Shakes

It's been snowing since Saturday, after all that lovely spring weather we've been greeted with a foot and a half of snow--it's a blizzard out there and today it's just awful.

I was taking Lillian to school at noon, going about 40 mph along the highway, and I came up over the small rise on the overpass when there in the middle of the lane in all that snow and near white-out conditions was a car. Sitting there--as in parked. Even though we were all going slow and were well-spaced the car in front of me swerved to avoid things and I panicked a little bit. I over corrected and started fish-tailing right along with the car in front of me.

Though the first car was able to pull out of it I was not and did several rotations like I was a puck in an air hockey game. I went twirling by the parked car, barely missing it then twirling past the second car and then the guardrail, fully expecting impact and waiting for the sounds of broken glass and being smushed. After another rotation I whipped over the side of the median to land in the ditch pointed backward--breathing rather heavily.

You'd think the whole thing would have ended right then but it was like a scene in a movie because turned around like that gave me the vantage point of being able to see the car which had been behind me--which happened to be a very large semi-truck and trailer--make the same mistake and start swerving and fishtailing toward me. As I sat there in the ditch I watched that thing come closer and closer I wondered if I should make a run for it but knowing there was no way to avoid anything I sat there, praying the truck would get control.

When it did and skidded to a stop in front of us Lillian burst into hysterical tears as the windshield wipers flopped back and forth and I took a quick mental note of whether there was any damage. I couldn't believe we'd escaped and after a call to a tow truck I scooped Lily up on my lap to calm her down.

But then I watched that dumb parked car sit there on the overpass with car after car swerving around it--suddenly a Subaru came through and did the same thing, spinning around in the same trajectory and headed right toward me all over again. Instead of getting lucky like I did and landing softly in the ditch it whacked the guardrail on every corner before coming to rest next to me. A regular pinball game it was.

The tow truck showed up right away and the dumb guy in the parked car finally got out to see if he could get a tow. He nearly kills 17 people then he leaves his car to steal my tow truck. Apparently he's never seen a housewife hopped up on adrenaline.

And it's still snowing.