Blonde Moment

SO. Upon arriving home from church tonight, I was faced with the issue of parking my car in our driveway so that it would be pointing back up toward the road. Currently, our drive is still covered in snow and ice- mortal enemies of my Camaro- and is on an incline. I failed to plan ahead this afternoon when I cleaned the snow off my windshield, and thus, did not clear the back glass as well. My first thought when I turned onto my road and pulled up to the drive was that I would back down our driveway to get my car in the proper position for take-off tomorrow morning. I pull a bit past our drive, put the car in reverse, look in the rear view mirror, and see nothing but a big wall of snow.

NEW PLAN. Use side mirrors to back up slightly and get car back in position to enter nose first. Yes, I realize it might have been possible to back down the drive using my side mirrors alone; the thought did briefly cross my mind. However, backing up is not my best skill when my view is completely unobstructed and the ground is as dry as a bone. Therefore, I implement the NEW PLAN.

I feel this requires some explanation, in hopes I will not be perceived as completely addle-brained. On Monday evening, before weather conditions got really bad, I went to the grocery store. During the 20 minutes I was inside Lowes Foods, the parking lot and my car disappeared beneath a blanket of white. I was already skidding and fish-tailing before I even made it out of the parking lot. (I'm telling you, my car HATES the snow.) So I went very slowly, trying not to slide around any more than I could help. When I arrived home, I was faced with the same dilemma as tonight. I solved the issue then by simply turning a big circle in the back yard, coming to a stop right where I wanted to be, no problem.

So, the NEW PLAN was to do that exact same thing again. Brilliant right?! Unfortunately, I failed to take into consideration that the amount of snow on the back yard is significantly higher than it was on Monday when I completed this maneuver. I also made the mistake of not making a big enough circle around the yard. I realized this upon finding my car pointed toward the neighbors' yard, at the point where the ground begins a downward slope. My attempt to reverse here resulted in me spinning my wheels. Now, without the snow, I probably could have made the turn and not risked sliding into the telephone pole standing nearby or putting a dent in the fence surrounding our neighbors' back yard. As it was, my brief attempt to continue on my path produced more sliding, so that idea was quickly aborted.

Being by myself and out of ideas, I call my faithful, loving husband to see WHERE he is at and WHEN he will be home. I explain my situation, hoping for help, and he LAUGHS at me!! jerk! Luckily, he's not too far away. When he gets home, he laughs some more, and then suggests some moves that actually do improve my situation. My attempt at forward motion to cross the yard to my parking space results in another bout of spinning tires, so I get out and let Daniel fix it. I really don't understand why it worked for him and not for me. Oh well, my car and I are out of danger without injury, except to my pride. So that's my blonde moment for the year! :-D