What The Hell Happened

At 6:00 AM yesterday morning we were awakened by the phone ringing. The call was somewhat expected, and the voice on the other end said that school was cancelled due to the snow. Suddenly, my wife and children had an extra day tagged onto their ten day winter vacation.

We had no plans for there vacation, other than some vague plan to go see a Plymouth Whalers hockey game and possibly a trip to Wheels Inn outside of Windsor. My wife hung up the phone, and we went back to sleep.

When the kids woke up, we told them to go away, and we were left unbothered until they needed breakfast around 8:30.

But here is what happens when the wife has extra time to sit around and plot. Her mother had some surgery two weeks earlier, and although my wife didn't want to visit her mother for the entire time she was off, she did want to get away, and she did want to visit her mother for a short trip. The problem was, we couldn't leave on Friday, and expect to get there in time for Shabbos.

But now that we had an extra day, suddenly there was time to go for Shabbos without killing ourselves and without missing any real time from work. Nevermind that the reason there was no scholl was a snow storm had dropped 8 inches of powder on our community, and the road to New Jersey runs straight through Ohio, wher mother nature had treated the Bush Stronghold state to 20 inches of snow.

We bought some food, got in the car, and off we went. It took an hour and a half to drive the length of Sout hfield freeway, a trip that normally takes 20 minutes. We saw spun out cars, a jack-knifed tractor trailer, and other assorted car accidents along the way.

Once we got on I-75, I assumed we would have more of the same. But the weather had cleared, and the plows had done their job, and the rest of the trip, from Michigan to New Jersey only took another 8 hours.

I am proud to say I sat in the passenger seat, shoes and socks off, for the entire ride. I didn't have to drive at all, and the only completely objectional music I was subjected to was Michael Jackson's Thriller CD. With the wife and kids in the car, I couldn't listen to any Eminem, but the kids didn't even ask for any of there CDs to be played. The read, and when the sun went down at 5 PM, they talked, fought, and finally, fell asleep.

So now we are in New Jersey. I don't know how long we will be here for. My mother-in-law was surprised. I was concerned she might have a heart attack when we surprised her on her way to the bathroom at 1 AM, as she hobbled along on her surgically-repaired leg, but she survived the shock of seeing us all.

And now we have a few days before we have to get back into the car and head west towrd home.