I'm back!

Written on Thursday, January 15, 2009 by haleigh

Thursday, January 15th

I'm back, from an amazing week of learning all about writing and more writing and more writing, and frankly, I'm freakin exhausted. But I learned a lot, much of which I will hopefully be sharing in the months to come.

So for now, the story of my return trip home from Pittsburgh:

I'd planned to leave Wednesday, after the end of our last class, but with winter storm advisories, inches of slushy, dirty snow, and ice everywhere, I decided that perhaps, a six hour drive home in the dark, through the mountains, might not be my brightest plan.

So I stayed overnight, and decided to attempt my journey during daylight hours. And thank every deity I could possibly get myself prone enough to bow to that I did!

My windshield wiper fluid decided it wasn't necessary, and stopped working. Which meant that every truck on the interstate (and there were a lot!) sprayed slush, salt, and ice on my windshield. Which I couldn't clear off. Or see though. You know, the little things. So every half mile or so, I had to role down my window (it was 7 degrees, by the way), reach as far out the window as I could, and pour bottled water on my windshield so I could run the wipers. Of course, half the water sprayed back into the car, as I was going 60 mph, which instantly iced over.

So it takes me an hour and a half to go twenty miles, I have ice all over my arm, and I'm on the freakin Pennsylvania Turnpike (for those of you not from PA, it's often a good 20 or 30 miles before they bother to give you another exit).

Not fun.

So finally I get home, throw my bags in the house, greet the puppy who missed me terribly, and see a beautiful bouquet of flowers the hubby got me. So I think, "Oh, I'll run over to work and say thank you!."

Not a good plan.

I race out of the house, without necessary things like my wallet or my phone. But hell, it's only two miles, what could go wrong?

The car breaks down.

And I mean, this POS breaks down. It's making a horrible thunking noise, I can smell burning oil, lights are coming on all over the dashboard, alarms bells are clanging - this car is done. So I crank the wheel and land in a pharmacy parking lot. I have no phone, no money. I scrounge for nickles and dimes, feed them into a payphone (I could barely remember how!) and called work.

Of course, Rob had just left. Ironically, as he was calling my phone over and over, trying to find me, and getting horribly pissed off, he drove past me. Just didn't see me stranded in the pharmacy parking lot.

It took another dollar worth of scrounged up nickles, two phone calls, multiple incidents of screaming and cursing, and me hanging up on him twice (hence the extra necessary nickles - I should have thought that part through), for us to get on the same page about what I needed (i.e., a freakin ride!).

So the moral of the story is.....okay, I can't think of one. But the car's now at the shop, I don't even what to know what went wrong, and I definitely don't want to know what it's going to cost to fix it. But at least it happened a mile from home and not on the PA turnpike.