O'Neil's Arctic Adventure

Thursday and Friday were the coldest days so far here in Cincinnati. Both days I walked to work... not completely of my own volition. It displeased me greatly. Here's what happened.

Wednesday night, my husband came home from his job, a job he is technically not supposed to have, by the way, because the University of Cincinnati expects him to support himself and his needy wife on a somewhat paltry sum. Anyway, it was late, so he had to park on a different street than we usually use...and he didn't tell me about it (I'm not so mad because of the aforementioned illegal job and needy wife). The next day, he rode the bus to school in order to let me have the truck to drive to school. I went to our normal parking street,Bryant, to look for the truck, but it was not there. Then I went to our back-up parking street, Whitfield, but the truck was not there either. By this time the 15 degree weather and the fact that I'm supposed to be at work in 20 minutes is starting to get to me. I frantically call David even though I know he's in class. When the phone connects the first voice I hear is a erudite woman saying something about archeology. I know that his phone has gone off in class and only have about two seconds before he hangs up the phone, so I scream "Where the hell did you park the truck!!!!" Then I hear a hang up tone. Later, David would tell me that he would have texted me the location but he was sitting right next to the professor at the time. So I think archeology lady probably knew we were having parking problems. With a grimace, I started to walk the mile to work in a light coat, dress slacks, dress socks, and no hat or gloves whatsoever. And I was late to work. Punctuality should have been next to godliness in my opinion, so this was really, really bad.

Friday- It's about 10 degrees with a windchill of Siberian tundra proportions. I start the morning think to myself that it'll be a good day because David told me where he parked the truck, I won't have to walk, and I won't have to interrupt David's class by screaming obscenities. Thrall Street, by the way. That's where it was parked. I hardly know where Thrall Street is. So as I'm walking down Middleton and turning on the cursed Thrall Street, I notice that the street is kind of icy, which is weird because it hasn't snowed here for a week or two. As I'm walking further down Thrall, which is on a hill, I noticed that it was getting really icy. The cars I was passing had an inch or two of ice built up around the wheels. In the cold weather, a water main had burst and all of the flooding water froze on the street Thursday night. I thought to myself, "Gee, whoever is parked at the bottom of this hill is really going to be frozen to the street." Do I even need to tell you who parked at the bottom of that hill? I didn't think so.

Well, I get to the truck, which has about four inches of solid ice surrounding the wheels, and I start laughing one of those laughs that only maniacs have. I started the truck just to see how bad the situation was. When I pressed on the gas, the wheels did not move. At all. To make matters worse, there was a brand new SUV parked about a foot in front of me, so if my little 1990 Ford Ranger ever did break loose, I would have smacked to son of bitch in the bumper going about 80 miles an hour.

I got out of the truck and called David just to tell him about his impeccable parking spot. He was sitting in an apartment with the thermostat on 71 at the time, so he thought it was a little funnier than I did. To help mollify my anger, he said he'd meet me at the lobby door to give me a hat, scarf, and gloves for my freezing cold walk to work. To be continued...

Part II will be up soon.