Snow Angel

As much as I complained about the cold and snow over the weekend in Gillette, it was exactly a year ago when we were having Mom and Dad's anniversary party there, and it snowed that weekend, too, much to Molly's dismay.

Molly hates Wyoming and blames her spite on Wyoming always being covered in a layer of what she's convinced is permafrost and rarely getting above zero before the wind is factored in. I think this is unfair, but I do dislike the wind in Wyoming.

This weekend was special, in that Mother Nature got back at me for not getting my car stuck once last winter.

Oh, it got stuck. And good. At night. Outside of town. I was wearing a dress and high heels and had left my snowboots conveniently in my coat closet in Laramie. My only option besides my very cute black heels was a very cute pair of black dress boots. Better than the heels, but by the time the ordeal was over, I was pretty sure I wouldn't have any feet left to worry about needing shoes or boots ...

I had gone out to visit Brooke and Colin and the kids and wound up staying for dinner and a recorded episode of "My Name is Earl." And then at 8, when Colin said he was worried that I might not be able to get back out of the driveway, I decided to try my not-so-superior drift-negotiating skills.

They're still not very superior.

The ironic thing was that, should stuck come to tow, I was stuck behind the very vehicle we needed to do the towing. Hah. Hahaha.

So Brooke had a go.

It was a slight improvement -- after pulling forward too far and nudging her SUV with my front bumper, she pulled back, the car floated in the drift ... and wound up stuck behind a tractor, with mere inches between the tractor tire and the front of my car. I couldn't hear what she shouted at the dashboard, but I can imagine, and I was glad the kids were in bed, whatever it was.

So now I'm in the "boots," black tights and a short dress, and I'm shoveling snow from around my car as fast as I can. It was frickin' cold.

And then Colin, who just thought he was going to get to go to bed, wound up pulling on his full-body coveralls and work boots and had his own go at getting it unstuck. He managed to get it stuck in a convenient enough position that Brooke was able to get the SUV out of the garage, and then it was a good ol' game of wintertime tug-of-war, SUV vs. tiny little sedan.

In the meantime, Brooke and I maintained a steady stream of apologies.

"I'm so sorry you guys are having to help me get out."

"I'm so sorry I asked you to come out here ... I should have known."

And so on ...

And every time my car found a new and deeper drift or a deeper, muddier rut to get stuck in, I apologized all over again.

While it was getting re-stuck, it was also kicking out quite a bit of mud, quite a bit of which wound up on me -- my clothes, my coat, my hair, my glasses. It didn't matter where I stood -- my car was determined to give me a spa-quality mud bath. Joy.

"At least it wasn't manure," my dad said when I told him the story the next morning.
At least.

To make a long (and cold) story a bit shorter, after much tugging, swearing, steering, revving, more apologizing, shivering, swerving, charging and more tugging ... the car was free, and my numb feet managed to press the pedals and my numb hands steered the wheel and my numb mouth asked for warm, woolly socks when I got home ... and then I lay on the floor in front of the pellet stove, my feet suspended in front of the blower while Mom and I discussed life and the crazy renters in her house.

Once I got the feeling back in my feet, things were pretty good.

But I think I've more than paid my dues for not getting stuck last winter. I hope it doesn't happen again this winter.