billroper | I Hate Ice

We were originally forecast to get about six inches of snow last night, so I had made plans to shovel this morning. When I saw that we'd gotten less than an inch of crunchy stuff that wasn't even particularly apparent on our driveway, I was relieved.

Of course, this was a mistake.

Today was Katie's last day of school before Christmas break and I wanted to make sure to take her to school today, because I'd missed taking her on Thursday as I was getting my tooth buffed up. But we clearly weren't going to walk through the snow in the schoolyard to get there, so into the garage we went. Katie climbed into the car and I started to walk out onto the driveway to fetch my newspaper.

I said "mistake", right?

Now, I looked at the ice on the driveway, but given the type of snow we'd had, I assumed there would be some traction. I put my left foot on the ice and it was fine.

And then I took one more step with my right foot and realized that it had no traction at all.

Crap. I remembered how this worked the last time. That was when I blew out my left knee.

I stopped. And I realized that I couldn't back up, because I couldn't swing my right foot back to safe ground, but I didn't dare try to move my left foot.

I contemplated the best way to fall down.

And then I yelled for help.

Gretchen came out, gave me a hand -- from a safe position! -- and then I had the leverage to swing my right foot back around to safe ground.

Phew.

I took Katie to school.

And Gretchen put about a metric ton of salt on the driveway. :)