If the Ladybugs Don't Get Val, This Earwig Will!

These darned old coincidences are wreaking havoc with Val's self-perceived credibility. Go ahead and make that twirly finger motion by your ear, and cut eyes at each other as you read on. This was not today's planned subject. It thrust itself upon me.

We had a bit of an ice storm Thursday night through NOW. The roads aren't all that bad, since the temperature hovered within three or four degrees of freezing, and MODoT's pre-treating was effective. I don't know how SOME PEOPLE managed to wangle a day off work on Friday...

I say that because I was in the city today. I saw the city. And let me assure you, the city looked nothing like THIS:

In case you need a closeup, there's this:

That's not just a little glaze. That's at least a half inch of ice right there. But still, our roads were FINE! So we did what any country bumpkin would do on a Saturday with a weather advisory...and took our 4WD Tahoe to the casino!

As we were driving for about a mile on the lettered highway, from a blacktop county road to the interstate, Hick and I were talking about my mom. He drives her old 2002 Chevy TrailBlazer to work every day, you know. And during the last ice storm, he had trouble getting over a little hump from the county blacktop road onto the lettered highway. He said he thought to himself, "Hmm...I shouldn't have had any trouble there." And when he could barely pull out onto the interstate over the next hump, he thought, "This 4WD isn't working!"

Yes, we talked about how Mom had always told us she couldn't get out of her driveway in ice and snow. And how we'd kind of ridiculed her, though we prefer, in retrospect, to think of it as teasing. How we'd cajoled her, trying to make her leave that TrailBlazer in 4WD when she parked it in the garage. I, myself, had asked her what she was saving the 4WD for, because obviously, it was made for chores like pulling out of her driveway!

Uh huh. Hick and I reminisced about Mom avoiding winter driving. And proclaimed how bad we felt for assuming it was HER, not the car, that had a problem.

As we pulled out and started up the interstate, a song came on the radio. A song that I've only heard on the radio three times now in the all my days of listening to car radio:

Holes in the Floor of Heaven. By Steve Wariner.

The other two times I heard it were also associated with my mom. The first time, Hick, The Pony, and I were driving to a writer's conference two summers ago, and I had just switched the radio to a country station on SiriusXM.

https://unbaggingthecats.blogspot.com/2015/07/val-brings-you-down.html

The second time was the day I got the great news from my principal that I didn't have to march in with the faculty at graduation ceremonies, and sit behind the valedictorian (The Pony) and salutatorian as they gave their speeches (where I missed hearing Genius's speech, because of how the speakers are set up), but could sit out front like a regular parent.

http://hillbillymansion.blogspot.com/2016/05/sometimes-wishes-really-do-come-true.html

Interesting timing today. Darn coincidences.