Ice Cold

The winter storm that blew through the region over the last  two days wasn’t really a terrible one — we got very little snow, and the whole thing was over and gone in about 30 hours — but it still left a mess behind.  While the major roadways were cleared quickly, side roads and driveways were another matter. 

We have a long sloping asphalt driveway, which was frozen into a solid, shimmering sheet of ice.  I managed to scrape out a skinny, shovel-wide path the length of the driveway to the street — wide enough for us to at least get one wheel into — only to discover that when the Maryland State Highway Department plowed the State road in front of our house, they left a pile of ice and slush at the base of our driveway, which had then frozen into a rock-hard iceberg, making the driveway impassable. 

It wasn’t much better this morning.  Our Jeep managed to navigate the slick pile at the end of the driveway, but I wasn’t so sure that our other car, even with its front-wheel drive, would have the same luck.  So I spent much of the morning scraping, salting, and bashing at the ice with a hammer.  Which actually worked.  And I even managed to successfully locate the car under the ice sculpture that was sitting in our driveway, hacking away at the ice, which tumbled off in inch-thick slabs.

The kids are back in school today, after two days off.  Given the ice that we, and other rural residents, were fighting, it was probably the right call.  However, I see our newest area resident thinks we’re a bunch of wimps. 

“My children’s school was canceled today, because of what? Some ice,” said President Obama. “When it comes to the weather, folks in Washington don’t seem to be able to handle things.”

Ouch.

While we often make fun of our area’s inclination to close school at the drop of a hat (we often joke that they close school on days of the week ending in Y), we . . . well, y’know, it’s our school district.  We’ve been here long enough to learn its quirks and criticize it.   We kid because we love.

It’s like the moment in The Music Man when the Iowans inform out-of-towner Harold Hill on the correct pronounciation of Iowa, even as they mispronounce it themselves.  “We [mispronounce it] now and then,” one Iowan says, “but we don’t like anyone else to.”

Exactly. Welcome to DC, Mr. President — and you can make fun next year!