You might be expecting some kind of happy and reflective Christmas post. Except you’re reading my blog, which means you probably know better. You, oh astute reader, are aware that there is no day of my year exempt from ridiculous situations and random stories.

Colorado most certainly had a white Christmas this year, which was quite beautiful. That is until I had to make an hour drive up to my boyfriend’s parent’s house for dinner. I’m not really too big of a wuss about driving in the snow, but I really wasn’t in the mood to put in so much effort for food. (I mean, next you’ll be expecting me to help cook it and everything…) I realized that that was probably not the best reason for blowing off a dinner (plus his mom makes pie!) and so I ventured out into the cold afternoon. And then I ventured back. I forgot my car’s gas light has been on for 4 days now. Oops. Somehow pumping gas in a snowstorm seemed utterly unpleasant, unpleasant enough for me to REQUEST to take the family’s minivan instead. Oh, the joys of living at home. I bet you wish you had minivans at your fingertips, waiting for your beck and call…

The roads were fairly slick and the snow was falling pretty heavily. The drive started out with me forgetting that I forgot how to get there until I got to the point that I had to pick my path. I, of course, picked wrong. Then, as I was driving down the wrong highway through a winter storm, the passenger-side windshield wiper of the car FALLS OFF. Luckily it gets snagged by the still attached and now worthless piece of wiper and I can assure you that I uttered some phrases that might not have made baby Jesus feel very welcome on his birthday. I made it to the next exit and proceed to call my mom to see what it is I need to do to reattach detached pieces of car. (And if any of you so much as start the “driving with a cell phone” lecture now, how about you go drive someone else’s car and have a vital and completely-necessary-for-the-moment-at-hand piece of said vehicle FALL OFF while you’re driving? Then you can talk. I might still whack you with a wiper blade, but you don’t even get to talk until that point.) Anyways, turns out the exit ramp was uber-slick and the car felt that skidding back towards the highway would be fun way to make my heart stop. (Again, I’m really sorry about the language, buddy. Happy birthday.) I finally got myself pulled over and spent the next ten minutes decrusting ice and reattaching car parts.

By the time I got back on the road, I had had about enough of this whole white Christmas nonsense and thought that I might just drive my car into a snow bank when Let It Snow came on the radio. It was time to turn off the Christmas cheer and find some real music. Luckily, the family minivan has good taste in music and a Beatles CD was already in place for me. It’s hard for anyone to stay mad when they listen to Hey Jude. (Maybe Mark Chapman…)

I spent the rest of the drive happily listening and playing with acronyms. Every time I lost traction when I braked today a fun little light in on the dashboard lit up. Since my car apparently does not have the same “TCS” excitement as the minivan, I was a little puzzled by the acronym and spent a fair amount of time throwing ideas for meaning around. Some of my personal favorites:

TCS: Traction Coming Soon
TCS: To Cure Skidding
TCS: Take Caution! Slow!
TCS: Time to Curse Silently

Apparently TCS actually means Traction Control System according to Google, but I kind of like all my definitions better…

If you weren’t have a good day already, hopefully the mayham that is my life helped bring just a little cheer. Happy holidays!

(Side note: Happily, I made it to my destination without any other major disasters and it turned out to be a very fun afternoon that proved worthy of the drive.)