ICE!!!!!!

So here in St. Louis there are some great things happening...like snow!  Love the snow...it's great!  You can go out side and play in it, build a fort, throw snowballs, crunch it under your feet, and put it down someones coat so they are frozen to the bone.  So I am a fan of winter and snow and almost all things that come from it.  I love Christmas, I love the Holiday spirit, I even love all the things I have to do during the season (like shop, even though usually I don't like shopping in general.)  BUT one thing I do NOT like about winter is ICE!!!! 

I didn't mind it so much until a few years back there was this horrendous ice storm that hit Springfield, IL, where I was working and going to school.  I lived in a town that was about 45 min away and I had class that evening.  I had class at 6:30 and so I waited in my office until word was finally sent out that classes were canceled due to the weather…that was at 6!  So I hurried up and got out to my car.  Once outside I was pelted with ice, not snow, not rain, not little pellets, huge balls of horrible shards of ice.  If that wasn’t bad enough I still had to scrape off my car and while in the parking lot I saw many students (I worked at that college and I felt like it was my responsibility to always be helpful) who didn’t have a scraper and who were trying to open their car doors by using there gloves and books and all sorts of other miscellaneous items to pry open their door and scrap off their windows so they could drive away.  So I saved the day. 

Being awesome and helping many students, I did a happy dance and went back to my car.  Only to find out I was the only person left in the parking lot, and my car still wasn’t ready for me to drive.  About a half hour after that I was in my car and I finally got a good look at myself in the mirror…it wasn’t pretty…I had gashes on my face from where the ice balls had hit me and my gloves were torn from where the ice had hit them…so I started slowly going down the road hoping to make it home to my nice warm house and into my nice warm bed. 

That’s when I saw it…all the truckers on the interstate were coming off the roads…ALL of them!  This NEVER happens.  So I called my mom (I’m a mammas girl and when things are bad I call her) and she told me to pull of into a hotel nearby.  So I did.  I got a room, went across the street to grab some food, and sat in my nice heated room watching TV until around 10…THEN the power went off…I went to the front desk to ask for some more blankets and to see when the power would be turned back on.  The lady told me she didn’t know about the power, but the blanket situation was a no go too.  The man in front of me got the last blanket.  So I was stuck in a hotel with the power out with ice balls hitting my window.  I went back to my hotel room…which was quickly turning cold, and hurried under the blankets. 

I woke up around 3a.m. shivering and I could see my breath.  All I could think was “I’m going to die in a hotel by freezing to death”.  I could see my obituary now…”Happy Dance died in a hotel room, by freezing to death during the ice storm…she helped too many students and when the power went out she was the last person to ask for a blanket at the hotel…please make denotations to the polar bear foundation, she would have wanted to save them as well.”  So I had one of two options…lie there and die…or get up and try and find away to survive.  This is life and death here people!  So I got up off the bed and went into the bathroom and I got all of the towels, my winter coat, my gloves, and the made a burrito out of all the covers on the bed and put all of the things I had gathered on top of the covers.  I then buried inside of the burrito I had made with my gloves on and the covers pulled up over my face and went to sleep. 

When I awoke there was a bright light shining in my face.  I thought I had died, and this was heaven.  I got up and realized I hadn’t died and I had made it through the night!  ALSO I had POWER!!! :)  I got ready for the day and skipped down the steps to get some breakfast in the lobby.  I was happy to be alive and to have power.  Then I looked outside.  It was nothing but ice!  How was I suppose to get home?  But first off how was I suppose to open my car doors when they were frozen shut by the ice? 

I got to thinking…hot water melts ice…there was a coffee pot brewing hot water for hot tea and hot coca.  I decided to fill up a bucket I borrowed from the hotel to poor on my car to get it open, start the car and then head home.  So that is what I did…three buckets later, my car door would open, five more buckets later my car tires were deiced…well sort of, and two hours later my car was deiced enough for me to get back on the road and head home.  That 45 minute drive from the hotel to my hometown took three hours. There were cars in the ditch and power outages in every other town. 

When I reached home, I hugged my mom (hey, I thought I was a goner the night before), went downstairs to my bedroom, and went to sleep. 

Now that I am in St. Louis (south of my hometown) I figured not so much ice to deal with…wrong…Ice Pellets in the afternoon until tomorrow…well I better get some hot water boiling so I can deice my tires.  Hopefully there will be no ice balls or truckers going off the interstate.  Wish me luck…this might make for an interesting drive.
This last picture is of me, tonight, trying to get away from the ice pellets, early prediction!