THAT WAS TOTALLY WICKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wicked.  That is a word we used a lot growing up in New England.  When the little boy in the Pixar movie "The Incredibles" witnesses his "superhero neighbor" saving the world, he screams out, "That was totally wicked!"  I LOVED IT!  How a single, simple word can bring back memories of growing up in New England.

Today is a snow day.  It is one of those days when you love it and you hate it.    Love the snow...it's so pretty!  Hate the snow...it's so heavy to shovel and awful to drive through!  Love that snow days are meant for family to lounge around, watch movies, and drink hot chocolate together.   I hate that snow days mean that as the boss, I have to leave my pajama and fleece blankey covered family and go to the clinic to care for the furry little friends.  I really don't mind the caring for the animals part, as I love the animals there, but leaving the family is bummer.  I remember when I was young, my Mom worked in a school so anytime that school was cancelled, we were home together all day.  Nothing to interfere with doing nothing.  It was great!

So here I am.  I only live a few blocks from the clinic, but I knew my car would present a problem.  The snowdrifts are so big I know I won't get my Dodge Caravan through them. I also knew that I did not hear a snow plow all morning so there were drifts at the end of our street as well as at the end of the driveway, and I am certain more drifts along the drive.  And the wind was SO bad that you could not see them coming until you were stuck in them. 

Have I ever mentioned that I LOVE facebook?  I do!  I really do!  I know more about what is going on in Jewell due to facebook than I do from any other source.  Facebook is where I found out school had been cancelled.  And it is where I found a friend blissfully passing his snow day playing games like Mafia Wars.  It suddenly came to me that he is a snowmobile guy!  AND he lives just around the corner from me!  I shoot him a question, "How much to get me to the clinic and pick me up in an hour?"  "Free" was the response!  His wonderful wife pops up on the chat screen, "Do you really need a ride?"  "Yes, I do."  "He will be there in 20 minutes!"  Wow, I couldn't have gotten better service from Acme Cab Company!  I changed my facebook status to "Getting an emergency snowmobile ride to the clinic.... a little nervous!"


He arrives on his snowmobile with my kids looking out the window watching, having never really seen a machine like that in person.  He gave me a helmet, gloves and his wife's ski pants to put on.   His skinny wife's ski pants.  Okay, really?  She is a skinny little thing, and me not so much, especially with 3 layers of pants on already!  I really had to choke those ski pants on!  I had no idea how I was going to get them off!  Can anyone say Jenny Craig?

My son waits at the door to see this tall guy dressed in snowmobile garb, all black with this big shiny black helmet still on his head.  I think my son thought he was a Transformer or Superhero!  My son starts running around acting like he is flying around the room, showing off for the obvious Superhero that is in our house and whisking his beautiful Mommy away! LOL!

After getting into those pants, we go outside and Iclimb onto the back of the snowmobile, or "sled", as the riders call them.  He takes off slowly, travels down the main roads, right to the door of the clinic.  Once I get in the door, off he goes, and I get to venture inside to take care of some of the cutest dogs and cats for the next hour! 

We have a group of eight dogs that were relinquished by commercial breeders to the  Peke N Chin Midwest Rescue group.  They are at my clinic for vet work.  Several Pekingese and several shih tzus and yorkie type mixes.  Very cute and fuzzy.  I would literally run the dogs outside, clean their cage very quickly, and run back out to get them.  The neighbors were probably laughing at me running stiff-legged in 4 layers of pants, snow boots, and what looked like just a long sleeve t-shirt only.   I had removed my sweatshirt and coat because I couldn't bend my arms to clean the cages!  ROBOT LADY CLEAN CAGE...not so easy!  The dogs were literally outside for a few minutes while I pulled the old blankets out of the cage, cleaned the cage, and threw new blankets into the cage.  I then ran back outside to grab them up again, their fur all snow covered, and I would run them back inside to their cage with extra food and water, and extra blankets and some donated little oval dog beds for them to curl up in, to keep them warm as they thawed from those few moments outside. 

As I am finishing up the dishes, in walks TransformerMan!  Perfect timing!  His wife is with him with her own snowmobile and transformer superhero suit...time for a ride!  Gulp and WOOOHOOOO!  I gather up my belongings.  We pick up the holiday wreaths that once decorated my clinic, but were now blown all around the parking lot by the still bombarding blizzard winds.  Off we go!  They drove me around the back roads of the clinic to the walking trail!  He thought it might be "more exciting".  The trail was all snow covered and full of drifts, big ones.   Periodically, he would look back to make sure his wife was still following us.  I know on motorcycles, you are supposed to lean with the other rider.  I forgot to ask if it was the same for snowmobiles.  Sometimes we leaned so far over I thought I might lean too far and  flop off into the drift and just wave as his wife rode by me or over me.  His speed kept increasing as he felt more comfortable that I was not going to panic and jump off!   By the end of the ride, we were hitting these drifts so big and so fast that my big fanny was leaving the seat (not an easy feat) as the snowmobile sailed through the air and not so gently landed back on the ground!  

After thanking them both for the help and the joyride, I went inside and thawed.  After a bit, I logged back onto facebook.  I posted a photo of my son wearing the Transformerman helmet with the caption "SpiderTransformerVaderMan".  I noticed that TransformerMan posted a message for me.  "Hope I didn't scare you too much!!!"  My response, "Nope, loved it! I just wished my arms were longer.  I thought I was going to bounce off a few times! LOL!"

 I then updated my facebook status to "THAT WAS TOTALLY WICKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"  Do I dare tell him that I hope we get another blizzard tomorrow!




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