A skating rink.

While I worked last night, the skies opened up again and dumped a thick layer of ice over our area.  When I did the old-lady-shuffle-waddle across the icy parking lot to my car this morning, I found it entirely encased in ice, doors frozen shut.  It took about 20 minutes of chipping away at it with my little ice scraper before I could safely pull out of my parking space.  Have you ever tried to scrape ice off of your windshield while standing on a sheet of ice and hanging on to an ice-covered car door handle for balance?  I'm certain that anyone observing my struggle was greatly impressed by the grace and dexterity with which I moved... feet sliding in opposite directions into a wide straddle, ice chips flying up and hitting me in the face as I hack away at the windows...

I pulled my back, got a massive headache, crawled home on the slick roads, parked on the street, slid half a block down the sidewalks, slid (again, gracefully, like an Olympic skier, I'm sure) down the steep snow-and-ice-covered gravel driveway, and soon after collapsed into bed with a heat pad on my back and a Naproxen dissolving in my stomach.  A few hours later I woke up, still in pain, and called out of work for tonight.  Yes, I feel crappy about doing that, but simply walking to the bathroom is painful, so I don't know how I'd manage working  a 12-hour shift.  It ain't happening.

At 3:30pm I wake up to a phone call from my mom.  Her car died at work this morning (!), she got a ride home from a coworker but then slipped on the ice (gracefully!  That's where I get it from!) in the driveway and fell on her face.  She now has an egg on her head, a few scrapes and a bump on the chin.  I told her take Naproxen (no, they did not sponsor this blog post, the stuff just really works), ice it for 20 minutes and call me.  She did, and reports that it's not getting worse, and she doesn't have any signs of a concussion, so we're gonna hold off on a trip to the ER unless that changes.  Oi vey. 

The lesson here?  Buy a decent pair of winter boots, keep Naproxen on hand at all times, and call to check in on your older friends and loved ones to make sure they're faring okay in this dangerous icy weather. 

And that damned groundhog had better be telling the truth when he says we're going to have an early Spring.