I finally have a snow shovel!

Today I had my first experience with a car stuck in a snowbank. Thankfully it wasn't mine. I woke up this morning to four inches of fresh snow and the threat from weather.com that "this is just the beginning because there are storms piled on storms and holy hell stock up on canned goods because the end is nigh!" Or something like that. I figured with as much as a foot of snow forecast for the next two days, it might be about damn time for me to buy a snow shovel.

So I eased my car down the driveway and into town. I picked up some groceries, then poked on down to the hardware store where I spent some time staring in complete confusion at the 50 different shapes and sizes of snow shovel on offer (they're two aisles down from the cookie sheets in case you're curious) finally grabbed one that looked like it was sort of in the middle of the pack shape and size wise and made a quick stop at the spa (closed on Monday) to get directions to this thing I'm supposed to be going to tonight.

And found Bethanie. Who had gone to our bosses' Christmas party the night before (I had an attack of social anxiety lameness, not to mention irrational terror of the copious amounts of drinking everyone had kept reminding me to expect and had stayed home in my pyjamas watching a marathon of Dirty Sexy Money with Sugar and Freckles. Yes. I am COOL.) and had managed to get her car stuck (in that snowbank I mentioned) on her way down the mountain from our bosses' bachanal. Oops. Armed with a new snow shovel and delusions of my own competence, I offered to take Bethanie back to her car and see if we couldn't get it out of the snowbank our own damn selves. Yeah. We couldn't. Mostly we stared at it. And for some reason the power of our hopes and wishes did nothing to move that damn car. So we called our boss. And he sucked up what was undoubtedly, from all reports, a killer hangover, and like the hip father figure he totally is, he met us in his Astro Van and pulled Bethanie's poor little car out of the snowbank.

And I stood there shivering, with wet feet, thinking . . . I'm really really glad I didn't go to that party. Because, while I really like the people who I knew would be there, I don't really drink much any more. (To be fair, other than a brief period in law school, I never really have. And certainly not when there's any chance I might have to drive.) And is it really fun to be sober around fun drunk people who you know will be getting behind a wheel? I have to say I come down on the side of "no". BUT this thing I'm going to tonight? Isn't so much a party. It's a bunch of women getting together to exchange cookies and maybe drink a hot toddy. It's a gathering. And I love gatherings. Especially with dessert. See, I'm not anti-social, I'm just 80.