Big snow, little mind

Regarding the photo: Picnic, anyone? Pretty, isn't it. If I were Swedish or Norwegian or from one of those other crazy cultures where people embrace this stuff, I might be sitting out there next to a fire, drinking grog, or glog, or whatever hot drink they drink. No, thank you.

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Perhaps you, like me, don't think about the ridiculous bulk of white that an 18- or 20-inch snowfall amounts to. Perhaps, like me, you can even walk in it, fall in it, watch your child struggle to get out of it, observe a neighborhood team shoveling event to precede the Olympic Games, and still not get it that 18 or 20 inches is an absurd snowfall.

Perhaps you, like me, were a simpleton and decided to venture out today.

Perhaps you also had house fever, and a sweet little child coughing insistently on you, and too many sporting events happening now and looming later today; perhaps the walls were closing in on you, too.

I forgot, you see, that all those inches of snow have to be displaced somewhere. I failed to observe that I had to exit the garage through a silly-small space between piles of snow as high as my head. I didn't consider that, as the piled snow melts slowly, it creates mounds of slush—slush that creeps onto the once-somewhat-cleared roadways. I suddenly recalled the lurching sensation I get in my stomach when my car slides along with a mind all its own, how small and vulnerable I feel when I am surrounded by much larger, more capable vehicles.

My little sedan held its own, and I got where I was going (which, honestly, was mostly just OUT). I even got home again; thankfully, the hill to our home was bare. (I wouldn't have attempted the trip if it hadn't been.) But as I pulled back into the driveway, I thanked God repeatedly that I don't live in northwestern PA anymore, where this type of madness is a much more regular occurrence.

I won't be heading out again today, thanks for asking. I found my common sense and put it firmly back on my head as soon as I got back home safely.