Tuesday, March 10, 2015

I need my sense of personal responsibility well rewarded for this

If you have been living in America for the past week, you know all about the SnowIceMageddopocalypse of 2015 - Part the Eleventy that hit last week. School was cancelled well before the first flakes fell so Dylan stayed home as he can't drive a stick shift and that was going to be the best option for getting anywhere. From my years of driving a Wrangler, handling an all-wheel drive Subaru that we borrowed from my mother-in-law was no issue so off to work I went. We closed early but next morning were ready for business once again. Did I mention that it got really cold Thursday night? And the Subaru is really old? Huh, well, that's important.

The plow front-loader came through around midnight and while Dylan had done an amazing job keeping our sidewalks and parking area clear, we still faced a speed bump of icy snow because: hella cold. Knowing it would take some extra time, I decided to be smart and warm up the car while clearing the parking area. I pushed the 'dis-arm' button. No answering chirp. Aw hell. Just to be certain, I pushed it again. Nada. Several more times. Not a chance in hell. So I went to manually unlock the door. Ha. Haaaa. Nope. I tried the passenger side. Nothing. Both back doors. Negative, ghostrider. Every door was frozen shut. The car clearing tools were IN the car, doing me absolutely no good. My last hope before giving up and getting (MOAR) coffee? The hatchback.

This will certainly be comfortable.
It was not frozen so yay! Unfortunately, this meant that I had to climb through the hatchback, over the kids' booster seats with my knee twisted into my ear, getting my other foot stuck in the cup holder and into the front seat, trying not to disembowel myself on the gear stick to 1) reclaim the car-clearing tools an B) start the car to warm it up. Crap, the door still won't open even after throwing myself against it several times. There's only one way out now: back over the seats, getting my butt stuck between the bucket seat while trying to free my leg from the pedal areas, smacking myself with the window cleaner before finally falling into the rear of the car to escape (?) into the cold. After all that I still had to dig out the mound of ice and snow to get the car out of the parking lot since most people don't put lifts and oversized tires on Subarus.

That took a good 15 minutes to do; wait, why are my hands so cold? We played outside with the kids for an hour yesterday and they were perfectly warm. It must be the shovel's fault. Okay, time to get this show on the road...oh you have got to be kidding me! The flipping doors are still frozen shut?! With the heater running on 'High'?! I don't get paid enough for this shit. Back through the hatchback I went,,crap, can I even close it from inside the car? - this time getting my hips stuck between the bucket seats and my foot wedged behind the rear-view mirror. After a few minutes I finally extricated all body parts and got settled. I was over half way to work before the door locks unfroze so at least I was able to exit the car normally once I got to work and spared the ignominy of calling for help to get me out of the car...since there is no interior release for the hatchback. I'll be expecting my hazard pay in my next paycheck, okay?

Yeah, sure, now you cooperate.

And this is why yoga would have been a good idea. The more you know.