SoapZone Community Message Board

since August, I had a Saturday off (the 2 Saturdays I had off in August were both requested in advance, so really this is the first time my boss has given me Saturday off as a regular part of the schedule). It was supposed to snow heavily, starting last Wednesday night and going through, oh, May (more on this later) but we didn't have a single flake on the ground, so I ran a few errands. In honor of Small Business Saturday, I went to a small Italian bakery located in a local mall (I was already at the mall to redeem a coupon for a free product from Bath and Body Works, plus I was looking for bootie slippers at JCPenney). I came home with some delicious homemade chocolate, a Nutella-filled "pizzoli" (their creation; they roll a pizzelle into the shape of a cannoli and fill it with various fillings) and a slice of pumpkin roll that was good but had some sort of odd spice in it that I couldn't quite identify and didn't enjoy.

Sunday, we still had no snow--in fact, the sun was shining--so we headed off to church. Five minutes into our drive, we encountered snowflakes and a light covering on the ground; when we got to church roughly 7-8 minutes later, there was a significant amount of snow on the ground, and it had started to flurry. We came out of church and it was snowing harder. Idiot that I am, I'd found slippers I really liked at JCP but didn't buy them because I thought they were expensive. I was going to just get a pair online but Dad said we should go over to the mall and he would buy the slippers for me for Christmas. The roads were...not great, and I was feeling really guilty about making Dad go to the mall, but we managed the drive with no mishaps...and again, we got home and the grass and roads were bare and the sun was shining.

And then sometime late yesterday afternoon, the flurries finally made their way to our town :-( And they haven't stopped. And despite my displeasure with the company the last few years, Dad signed up with the same stinkin' useless plow service again; they get your money up front instead of doing a pay-per-plow model, and I feel that gives them the freedom to just come whenever, or not at all. They're supposed to come whenever there's more than 2" of snow on the ground...we have at least 4", more coming, they've clearly not been here, the driveway's a mess and Dad, against my strenuous objections, went out and shoveled a little.

I have to go to work today at 2:00 and I'm slightly panicky about the drive. Up until a few years ago, I was pretty blasé about driving in the snow, mainly because I've done it so often...but in winters past, I was only driving a few minutes to and from work, on fairly flat roads. When I worked my previous job, it was a longer drive--around 15-20 minutes depending on traffic--but it was on main roads that were usually fairly well maintained and the hills were minimal. But my current workplace sits in essentially a valley; the roads I usually take are narrow back roads that go almost straight down into town. I'm planning on leaving super early today and taking the one main road that goes into town. It's a little out of the way (I'll have to double back slightly), and there's a spot where the road goes WAY down and then WAY up again, but I'm hoping it's better maintained due to it being a bigger road with more traffic. I'm also hoping the town I work in, which is several towns south of me, isn't getting as much snow, since most of this is "lake effect" snow, and they're that much further away from the lake.