Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Reprieve and winter weather

My dad isn't coming to visit this weekend after all - he called earlier this week and said he had a doctor's appointment on Friday, that it would be too much on him having that and trying to get ready and travel, too. So he and my stepmom will come visit after the holidays.

But we will be going home for Christmas. K and I talked, and his dad is having some health problems that prevent his parents from traveling. So we decided that, swingset or no, we'll drive to Louisiana for Christmas. Both of our dads are getting old, and we won't have them forever. So right now it's more important for J to get time with his grandfathers than to be here on Christmas morning. We're going together - yes, we get along well enough that we can make a 7-hour car trip together! LOL I'll see his family, although I doubt he'll want to spend any time with my dad when I go over there. And family is happy we're coming home, so I'm glad we're going, although I'm really not looking forward to the drive - it makes me tired just thinking about it.

And yes, we have winter weather in Texas!!! Yuck. Midlothian schools were closing at 12:30, and the winter storm watch/warning was all over the news this morning. Of course work didn't close. Oh, wait, we did get an e-mail saying that we could close early at 5:00. OK, technically that is early, since our hours are 8 AM to 7 PM. But 5:00 wouldn't have done me a lick of good. K said the afternoon news was saying that things had gotten a lot worse by late afternoon, and that Highway 67 (the way I come home) was one of the worst areas. There was a wreck at 67 and I-35 - right where I go home. Had I waited, that could have been me. So I told my manager around 11:00 this morning that I was taking half a vacation day today (I'd planned to use it on 12/19) because of the weather and because Midlothian schools were closing at 12:30. I also told him to just put me down for a vacation day tomorrow as well, that if daycare was open and I could make it in then I wouldn't use it. Work will be open tomorrow unless the mass transit system shuts down (and how often does that happen?), so since I can't get out of my driveway, I reckon I'll be using that vacation day. If I get in trouble, so be it - it's not like you can plan ahead for bad weather, and they don't pay me enough in one day to meet the deductible on my car insurance if I get in a wreck.

As it was, I nearly did. Things didn't seem too bad, and then it started sleeting when I got to Cedar Hill. The stuff was freezing on my windshield, even with the defroster on, which is never a good sign. And on one of the several overpasses I cross on my way home, my car hit a patch of ice and swerved back and forth several times before I got across the bridge and it righted itself. Let me tell you, my heart was in my throat, and I prayed and cried the rest of the way to daycare. I was so close (less than 10 miles at this point), and I would have been just sick had I gotten in a wreck then. And if I had, I don't know that K could have made it from his apartment because the roads were getting icy (he'd already made it home - he offered to pick J up, but I figured I'd be fine leaving at 1:00, I wasn't expecting any really bad stuff on the roads). I was oh, so very glad to pull into the parking lot at daycare, and beyond glad that I'd chosen to leave at 1:00 instead of waiting until 2:00 or 3:00, or God forbid, 5:00. At that point, the rest of my trip home was on surface roads - no more overpasses.

It was sleeting pretty hard when I got to daycare, so I went in and got Julian (poor baby, I woke him up from a nap! He was sound asleep - why can't he do that at home? :lol: ) and we headed for home. When stuff is freezing on the hood of your car that's been running for 45+ minutes, that's COLD. As soon as I was safely home, I called work and told them that anyone who lived south might want to leave right then, before it got any worse.

It's been sleeting off and on all night, with some snow mixed in, and the last time I checked, my thermometer said 22 degrees. The wind chill is in the single digits, and it's just f***in' nasty cold. I'm glad we don't get much of this in Texas - I couldn't stand it!!!

And now J has taken to sleeping in my bed. ??? Night before last, bedtime was a pitched battle, with him having a screaming fit about not getting in bed and finally telling me he was scared. It took over 30 minutes for me to finally rock him to sleep, and he was up three times during the night. I finally told him to get in my bed at 5:00 AM or so - I figured that at least that way I'd get to sleep until my alarm went off. Last night he wanted nothing to do with sleeping in his bed, so he slept with me. (I thought about picking him up and moving him to his bed after he was asleep, but I could have no more done that than I could run a four-minute mile - he's a big boy, and 43 pounds of dead-asleep weight is hard to lift!) This morning he said something about not being able to see the mirror (the one that came with his gigantic dresser, that we've never been able to get put on the dresser - it's been sitting at the end of the hall for ages), and I finally got it out of him that he didn't like the mirror. I asked him if he'd sleep in his bed if I moved the mirror, and he said yes. So I put it under my bed (no small task, as the mirror is almost as tall as I am and pretty darned heavy). But did he sleep in his bed tonight? Noooooooo. There's a ghost in his room. So he's snoring in my bed again. My mattress is a good three feet off the floor, and I'm scared to death that he'll fall out of the bed. AACK. No wonder my hair is turning gray.

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