OmegaMom

My other potential title for this post was “As cold as ice”.

I’ve mentioned the horrendous winds we get here on a regular basis.  This morning I was woken by one, bright and early (okay, dark and early), a half-hour earlier than I normally get up.

The wind continued throughout the day; currently we have sustained 17 mph winds with gusts up to 37 mph, but it topped out some time this afternoon with sustained winds at about 30 mph and gusts up to 44.  The forecast says gusts up to 70 mph tonight.  Usually with a wind like this, the Big City forecast will have a wind warning.  Today, none.  Why is that?  Why, because the winds were nowhere near Big City this time, just on our side of the inlet.  So there we are, with 60 mph winds where OmegaDad works, and no wind warning.  Elitist snobs.  The weather folk, that is.

The wind was strong enough that while I was home the lights were flickering and dipping in and out at various times during the day.

The wind was strong enough that while I was out, it was blowing my big honkin’ piece of iron also known as a Ford Freestyle.  This is quite rare.  The Big Honkin’ Piece of Iron is, at its heart, stable.  Sedate.  A soccer-mom’s type of car.  It takes a goodly bit of moving air to rock this car on its axles.

One of the problem was that when the wind blew while the car was on the icy side streets, the car would fishtail.

Such fun.

See, we had boatloads of snow earlier.  We’ve had snow piling up since early October.  The last big snow, after Thanksgiving, was icing on the cake.  Or coals to Newcastle.  Or ice to an igloo.  Or something like that.  So the side streets were solidly packed snow, which is generally good driving.

Until you get about five days in a row where the temperature hovers around 33 or 34F, complete with misty rain, during the day, and goes down to 28F at night.  The top layer of packed snow melts then freezes.  The misty rain puts a slight layer of water on top of the ice that results.  Then you have what I consider “a lovely mess”.

Getting out of the cul-de-sac today–or getting back into it–was a nightmare.  It was solid ice from our garage door, down the driveway, up the cul-de-sac, down the intersecting street in both directions, and on the intersecting streets with that street.  Once you got to the more major roads, you finally hit bare concrete and asphalt, and suddenly got traction.  But until you reached that point…

…and if you had the Winds of Hell blowing…

…even in a great Big Honkin’ Piece of Iron…

Well, let’s just say it was A Grand Adventure.  There.  That’s the optimistic point of view.  We’ll just gloss over the moments of sheer heart-pounding terror as BHPOI was buffeted by the howlin’ winds while on the side streets and slid (slooowly, because I was driving like a 75-year-old) this way, and then slid that way as I corrected, and finally (finally!) settled down again roughly pointed in the right direction…

…only to be buffeted once again.

Ugh.

By the way–the day was completed by having to sit around the tire dealership for a couple of hours (there were a lot of folks who needed tire work today), only to be told that letting Fix-A-Flat sit around in a tire for more than a day was A Very Bad Thing and that Fix-A-Flat rots the insides of tires so that patches won’t stick well and “compromises the integrity of the tire” and, say, lady, did you know you need a new tire?  To the tune of $168.  Harrumph.

I am still questioning whether I was taken or not.

It doesn’t help that yours truly, who has been quite mellow lately, unlike last year, bouyed by lots of nice bright snow and relatively clear days and a truly stupid private daydream, has suddenly had the daydream yanked away (reality bites sometimes), the clear days disappear, and the mellow abruptly morphing into the galloping blues, just like last year’s blues.  Except much shorter, hopefully, as the solstice approaches quickly, as does my one week in (gloriously sunny) Arizona.

Wah wah wah.  I promise to have a more spritely post tomorrow, filled with Christmas-tree and gingerbread-cookie goodness.