Another Icy Day

It's another icy day and I received a call from my vanpool driver earlier -- she's not driving today and our back-up driver refuses to drive also. According to the news, the roads are all pretty icy and several regional schools have either closed for the day, or are running late in order to allow the plows to get out and dump sand/salt on the roads to help melt the ice. I had counted on riding the van today so I wouldn't have to deal with icy roads, but that is obviously not an option anymore. Fortunately I hadn't yet gotten ready for the day, so I put on my grubbies, grabbed a winter coat and went outside to wrestle three 60-pound sandbags up to the truck that had been stored in my shed. Of course, when I finally got all of the ice and snow kicked away enough to allow me to open the doors, I discovered my sandbags were in the corner where the giganto spider had made it's home this past summer. Great. I hate spiders. I didn't kill that one because it was a ground spider (non-venomous) and I hoped it would help kill off all of the other spiders that likes to make my shed their home. Ground spiders are a different breed. They actually stalk their prey. I'm fine with them being inside, but they'd better not think they can come inside or they are toast! Anyhow, I finally got the sandbags out and was able to carry two of them to the truck before my wimpy muscles (I really need to start lifting weights again) gave out and I had to drag the third one. I tell ya, I can speed walk for several miles and my heartbeat never gets to the ideal "aerobic" rate that experts suggest. But 15 minutes of wrestling those sandbags sure did the trick. I had to lean against the truck for a minute to catch my breath before lifting the last one into the truck bed.

The funniest part of this is that today isn't even the worst predicted for this week. Tomorrow and Thursday are supposed to be much worse. Oh well. I now have 320 pounds of sand in the truck bed. I'll have to stop and get another 70-lb bag later because they suggest 400 pounds for my type of lightweight truck. We'll see how I do on the roads. One thing is for certain. Work is certainly not worth risking my safety over and if I discover the roads are too bad to drive on, then I'll turn around and come home. I may try later, I may not. If I do go in, I may opt to leave early. This is definitely the part of winter that I hate -- when it's warm enough that we get freezing rain instead of snow...and when the snow melts only to refreeze as ice the next day. Grrrrrr.