Ice, Ice, Baby.

That's what I had to contend with driving over on my way to work this morning. (The ice, not the babies. What kind of sick person drives over babies?!? Seriously, you need help, man!) [Author's Note - Sorry about that. Our sick sense of humor sometimes gets the better of us. We promise, no more gratuitously violent interruptions.] (Isn't referring to yourself in the plural or the 3rd person a sign of mental instability? I blame it on the Theraflucinations.)

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Naturally, all the remaining snow left over from Sunday and Monday refroze last night, and parts of the road were still quite dangerous when I went to work at 7:20 AM this morning. I did a bit of sliding and tire spinning, but it was nothing major, fortunately. The scary part came when I actually pulled into the Kroger parking lot at work. We have (or at least we're SUPPOSED) to park behind our store, back by the loading docks for Kroger and OfficeMax. Normally this isn't a problem, but today the parking lot was a skating rink, coated with a combination of thin, super slick sheets of ice, and ridges and plains of chunky frozen snow.

I was talking to Monica as I pulled around the back of the store, and the first thing I had to do was drive up onto a bunch of frozen snow to avoid the police car that was coming the other way, in the somewhat cleared part of the pavement. No big deal. I slowly crawled my way up onto the ice, and waved to the cop as he drove past me in the opposite direction. Then came the REALLY scary part.

At the end of the building is the Kroger loading dock, and there were a couple of trucks parked there, unloading the day's shipments. The problem was the box truck that was pulling behind them, heading directly towards me on a perpendicular path. They applied their breaks, but they were on a slight hill, and on ice, and even though their tires stopped turning, their truck continued to slide across the ice towards my car. Now I was on a patch of ice myself, so I couldn't just give the car some gas and easily get out of the way. I just had to keep pushing forward, unbearably slowly, as the truck loomed ever closer. More or less, the last thing Monica heard (because I was still on the phone with her) was "Oh crap, truck!" Needless to say, she panicked a little, not seeing what I was seeing, but imagining all the horrible possibilities!

Fortunately my tires were able to gain purchase on the pavement, and I narrowly avoided being t-boned by the bothersome box truck. Then I had to cross another large expanse of ice, turn slowly to face the other way, and try and ease my car into an area of low ice coverage. I pulled into a spot, decided I was up a little too far, and tried to pull forward into the adjacent space. I say "tried" because as soon as my car moved forward slightly, my tires encountered a mound of packed snow and ice and started spinning, leaving me floundering in place. "Okay, reverse it is!" I said out loud. (At least I think I did. I'm not really sure if the voices I'm hearing lately are mine, in my head, or from other people. Theraflu again, I'm sure.)

Anyway, I backed up slowly, got off the ice, shut off the engine, and carefully walked across more ice to get to the sidewalk that leads up to the front entrance of my store. From there on, things were fairly humdrum. It was a long day though, because it was relatively slow at work, overall, and I'm still not feeling 100% so I wasn't on my A-game. But I made it through the day without any major incidents.

Yesterday was the first day I've had to call out sick from work since I started working for OfficeMax over 2 years ago. I don't want to make it a habit.

Well, I'm starting to zone out here (more so than usual), so I'm going to wrap this up. Again, I'm sorry if this doesn't make any sense. I probably shouldn't blog medicated. *Goofy grin* Have a good night all. Peace.