Worse than that, my town has a one-hour school delay. That means the plow drivers, sanders, and salt truck drivers are all getting an extra hour of sleep and/or hanging out at Dunk's having coffee. (Kidding - they're out there because I pass a salt truck.) Actually, it truly means no one is in any great hurry to get side streets cleaned up.
Pissah. It's trash day in my neighborhood. That means I must slog through the two inches of marshy Slurpee-coated driveway, sidewalk, and street just to throw my trash at the corner. I decide to do this while going out to start my car, then I drag some of the wet crap back into my house to get my work gear.
Slog #2 happens when I make the return trek back outside to leave for work in earnest. The street, a hill of slippery proportions, has not been touched yet, not by plow and not by sander. I live right at the crest, but my driveway is a slightly lower elevation. I have two choices: continue downhill and risk sliding nose-first into an extremely dangerous blind five-way intersection, or attempt to continue uphill through the semi-icy crap and risk sliding backward, heading ass-first into that same dangerous intersection.
Success! I make it up and over the crest.
The ride to work is a bit scary because even when I hit the main road, it has not been properly cleared (if at all), and there is no way to see the lines. It is a four-lane drag strip with traffic passing mere inches apart, and we all run the risk of a head-on crash (at decent speeds) at any given second. I only almost get hit four times before I turn onto the road toward school.
I am a little pissed off when I arrive and the parking lot has not been cleared. I attempt to park in my usual space, slowly creeping my all-wheel drive through about three inches of disgusting white muck. I decide I am not really in the space and attempt to move forward, but my car has already frozen into place. Guess I'm staying right where I am, lines be damned.
The janitorial staff is snow-blowing the sidewalk ... to the superintendent's office. The doorway where I enter is still a cruddy mess, so I slog right on through, making this trip from my car to the door a long one hundred yard ford through slushy streams and slippery sleet-covered walkways.
When I enter the building, there is a huge mat on which to wipe my feet. If I happen to drag ice with me beyond the mat, I will most likely careen down the long hallway, fall onto the linoleum, and smash my skull open. This would be very bad because I am the first to arrive in the building (other than the secretary who is three hallways away), and I will most probably bleed out before anyone else shows up for school.
I slide my feet along the mat, then I stamp them, then I wipe them. I repeat this action several times, back and forth across the large rug.
For some strange reason, I suppose because my brain isn't wired correctly, I start humming The Mexican Hat Dance song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g8CEOpVSZU
Not the whole song. Just the middle part. I use my feet as I hum the song:
Slide - slide - slide (stamp! stamp!)
(Duh - dah- dah- dah- dah- duh- duh!)
Slide - slide - slide (stamp! stamp!)
(Duh - dah- dah- dah- dah- duh- duh!)
Wiiiiiiiiipe - wiiiiiiipe - wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiipe ....
(etc., etc., etc.)
This is when I remember that there is a camera in the ceiling recording my every move. I look up, wave, snap a picture of the doorway for the blog (because this is a blog-worthy moment), and continue down the hall saying out loud (because I am, after all, the only one in this end of the building), "I crack my bad self right up."Thank goodness the only thing I crack up is myself. I don't crack up my car, I don't crack any bones walking to and from my car, and I don't crack my skull open on the wet school floors after entering the building.
Still, my antics have been recorded via camera for all of posterity, so somewhere there's a tech (probably holed up in the connected high school computer lab deep in the basement) wondering what the hell I am doing, which makes my slush-inspired Mexican Hat Dance even funnier. Perhaps I'll join the tech and we can both laugh while we watch my impromptu music video.
