If you follow me on any of my social media outlets, and saw any of my post this past week, you'd know it was a pretty tough week.
I left the office at 10:00 am on Tuesday headed as fast as possible to Nashville and out of our "light dusting"in Birmingham. We got about 15 minutes out of the city and noticed that the snow had really picked up, but continued on. I think we felt we could get ahead of it because Birmingham wasn't really even supposed to get that much.
On the way to Nashville...before the chaos. At mile marker 275 (to be exact). I approached a jeep that had spun around and was headed toward us going the wrong way on the interstate. I calmly moved over into the shoulder to avoid her, and as I began the process of trying to get back on the interstate (I was still stopped), was creamed from behind. Jolted. What. the. heck.
His car.
My rental.[This is a note to the nice guys who stopped to help....thank you. thank you for checking on us, for pushing his car out of the interstate, and for just being there. You earned a jewel in Heaven.]
The man doesn't remember what happened, but he hit us with the back of his vehicle, so he had to be doing 360s or spinning. We called the highway patrol, and patiently waited for them to arrive 30 minutes later (at this point there were wrecks everywhere). The back of the window was blown out and a piece of the metal from the car was jabbing into the tire.
We watched the man's wife attempt to stop moving traffic on the interstate (in pouring down snow) so she could cross the interstate. I was in the patrol car at that point and the officer may have blown my eardrum out yelling at her to get out of the road. He looked at me and said, "and they wonder why we have to be so mean." Ha. In the midst of straight up chaos, it was crazy entertaining.
By the time we were able to leave, the roads were really bad. We slid all the way down the exit ramp (and noticed a pile up of cars at the bottom that were sliding everywhere). We didn't stop and managed to get back on the interstate, headed back to Birmingham. Due to one of our tires being out of commission, we slid all over the place. I looked down at my hand at one point and was shaking intensely. It was a time when I was truly relying on the prayers of my family -- prayers for the tire to keep air, for us to stay on the road, for our sanity, etc.
We got about 3 miles from the office (3.5 to be exact cause I mapped it), and stopped. Cars were sliding down the hill in front of us and people were having to push them up the hill. Luckily, after two hours of sitting, the sand truck got in front of us and helped us get through. We ended up being in the car for six hours to go those 3.5 miles and abandoned the jacked up rental on the side of the road near our office.
Scary, scary ride back. Where are the other cars? Why piled up at the bottom of the exit ramp. Enter true chaos. I walked about 200 yards to my office and cars were everywhere. People had abandoned their cars and walked home. Walked to our office. Walked to shelter elsewhere. It was chaos. My car was blocked at the office (I would have never tried to attempt to get up the hill as everyone was sliding backward). I, along with 20+ other employees, spent the night at the office.
Enter sore throat.
The next day my coworker Tracie convinced me to get in the car with her and head home (we sent a car of people ahead of us to tell us how the roads were). So I agreed. I honestly had started feeling so bad I didn't imagine staying at the office any longer than I had.
And we made it home. We drove on straight up ice at some points, but slow and steadily made it to my townhome. It was glorious. And I crashed.
The next day my neighbor and her fiance took me to the grocery store and to get Mabes. I couldn't stand knowing she was holed up in a kennel so we weathered the roads and made it there. Mabel and I got home and went back to bed (remember sore throat?). I ventured out later that night and got my car.....it took two days to clear out the parking lot so we could get our cars out...that's how crazy it was.
Abandoned cars outside my office. On a major road. I imagined working from home on Friday due to all the trauma and chaos....even told my HR manager that I would likely be in my pjs on Friday. But I woke up and headed in to work, still feeling really crappy. I made a wise decision to head to the doctor first to make sure that sore throat and achyness wasn't anything big. Doc did a culture of my throat, it was strep.
I cried for about two solid hours. I had held myself together beautifully through the week and just couldn't handle it any longer. I had officially had the crappiest of crappy weeks. For the first time in a long time, I actually emailed the office and told them I was sick, and was absolutely out of commission. In other words, I'm going to bed for a couple of days. And that I did. I didn't really emerge back to life for four days. My body was over it all. I was emotionally over it all. I crawled in the fetal position and let down.
Mabel stayed right by my side. Sweet boo. It's been a week since then and I can now laugh about it all. And have done so multiple times....I have some pretty great stories from that day.
