ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

Today is a marvelous winter wonderland dream come true for me, and a misfortunate nightmare for my roommate. Too bad. I woke up this morning when she got into the shower, and decided to go turn the heat up from 60 because I was very, very cold even with my down comforter. While I was out in the living room, I noticed that the room seemed unusually bright for this time of the morning, and looked out the front door to see snow about 8 inches deep drifted all over creation.

The first thing I did, besides goggle at how beautiful it looked, was rush into my room and pound on the bathroom door to tell my roommate. Then I called my boss and left a message on his voice mail to let him know I might be late for work. Then I threw on a pullover and scarf, and ran to the back door, which I had a great deal of difficulty opening because there was over a foot of snow drifted against it. Throwing caution to the wind, I made my way across the deck and down the stairs, slipping at the bottom and scraping the hell out of my ankle on a large rock. Undaunted, I proceeded to the gate to scrape at my car, but was unable to open the door because of the snow.

My roommate called her boss and discovered that foul weather, a severe road conditions warning in effect until 9:00 AM, and an inability to get to actually get there did not in fact excuse her from from work. Unfortunately we live on a hill, and our driveway is a narrow and steep thing sandwiched between a huge walnut tree and a retaining wall. We looked out my roommate’s window at my car, which was not really visible anymore beneath the drifts. Meanwhile my boss called me back to tell me not to try come in because he had figured out that there was no power in the neighborhood where our store was located and he too would be staying home.

But my roommate was still not exonerated, and since we both work for the same company our bosses’ boss had ordered us to try and get my car out of the muck so she could go to work, which made me sad because it would be a lot of work. My car has a history of coping poorly with dramatically adverse conditions such damp roads, so I wasn’t optimistic. But I went out with the kitchen broom anyway, and spent a half hour sweeping off the car and the driveway behind it. Much as I had assumed, it was all to no avail, because my car was firmly entrenched in the snow and couldn’t get any traction. After spinning the wheels for a few minutes, gaining brief but unsteady traction and nearly sliding into the side of the house, we gave up and went back inside.

To make the rest of the story short, we put on some Christmas music and had a cheerful breakfast of piping hot tea and porridge before my roommate was informed by higher powers that she was to trudge to the end of our street and walk to the highway so her store manager could go pick her up and take her to work. At least we had some good times before our poor hopes of a day filled with holiday cheer, baking, snow ice cream, and snow sculpting were dashed cruelly against the brick wall of our company.

The very nice thing about all this is that because my boss is very generous with scheduling and wants to take time off at Christmas, he’s letting me have the Thanksgiving holiday for a sort of mini-vacation, and I don’t have to go back to work again until next Tuesday. I’m glad he’s granting me this time off, because I could really use it to unwind from the tension of school and work. At any rate I’ll be certain to stuff my roommate with cocoa and sweets when she comes home, to make up for having to go to work on such a splendidly snowy day.