Up Close and Personal...

Yesterday was the culmination of a long week at work, with more work ahead of me for the weekend: Christmas cards (yes, I've still not done them, but I DID finally get my real letter written), laundry, wrapping presents (or as Savannah asked: "Mommy, when are you going to fold our presents?" Can you tell how much of my life is spent on laundry?!), grocery shopping, and finishing up the gift buying.

With all of this in mind, and with the snow falling in great gobs, I decided that I really didn't want to deal with cooking dinner. I ordered pizza from Hyrum for the kids and dinner for Tom and me from the small restaurant here in town. Anyone who knows me well knows that even though I've lived in Idaho and Utah all of my life, I am NOT a fan of snow. I do not ski (although I'll admit that I'd really like to try cross-country skiing or snow-shoeing), snowmobiling is fun for about the first 10 minutes before frostbite sets in, and ice skating is a personal recipe for disaster. All those songs about "dreaming of a white Christmas" are a total bunch of crap in my book!

But I digress... Although most sane people would order pizza and then have it delivered to them in the comfort of their home, and although the only thing I hate worse than snow is having to DRIVE in the snow, I also have this part of me that feels guilty about making somebody else have to drive in it. So, I ordered it to go. Braden and I hopped in our Tahoe (thank GOD for 4-wheel drive) to drive the 7 miles to Hyrum to pick up the pizza.

As we were slowly returning along the dark, long, skinny, and slippery 2-lane road (with a deep drop-off to the canal lining the entire thing) home, Braden calmly said "deer." I have long-suspected that Braden has more than just a touch of A.D.D., so in addition to constantly fidgeting, he doesn't often say anything in a calm manner. He's very enthusiastic about life and everything he has to say!

Anyway, he had been yammering on and on about who knows what while simultaneously tapping a raucous drumbeat on the top of the pizza box. The word "deer" briefly entered my subconscious as not fitting in with the conversation, which I'll admit I was only half listening to as I concentrated on the road. Then he calmly said it again. Because of his natural exuberance, I've often worked with him about not screaming something when he DOES get excited because it will more than likely cause me heart failure, even if it's for nothing. Finally he'd learned his lesson, just when a nice, rousing shout of "GREAT MOTHER OF ALL THAT"S HOLY" would have been better.

All of this transpired in the space of about two seconds of course, so about the same time that I was pondering it, I also saw the deer in the headlights. I knew I couldn't stomp on the brakes because the road would be too slippery and we'd go off into the ditch for sure. I also knew I couldn't hit the deer without doing some major damage to both it and us. We braked, it looked at us, we slid, it looked at us, we slid some more, and it finally decided to meander out of the way.

Honestly, I don't know HOW we didn't hit it or go off the road. That is the closest I've ever come to certain disaster, and it really did seem to play out in slow motion. As we finally drove past, Braden congratulated me on my good driving (which was really a compliment coming from him) and continued on with his story... Meanwhile, my heart was trying to take flight within my chest, and the good old adrenaline kicked in and my leg (which was really needed for pushing on the gas pedal) started shaking like a chihuahua in a snowbank...

This just goes to prove my point, once again, that I should have been born as a bear so that I could just hibernate the winter away.