Wiped out

I was driving Aisling out to her piano lesson this morning -- sales have been good and bills are caught up, so we were able to rake up enough green for a one hour lesson -- and it was such a pretty morning. The roads were still very slushy, which was irritating, but there were little, tiny wet snowflakes dancing through the air; in the sunshine, they were very sparkly and faerie-like.

So we're rolling along behind a truck, which was throwing some road slush up on the windshield. Plus, there were those little snowflakes, which turned all melty as soon as they touched the glass. So I put the windshield wipers on to clear the mess and found that the blades were encased in great big ice cubes. The swiped across the windshield, leaving nothing but a big, blurry smear of water, which rapidly began to turn to ice. My visibility was zip. Zero. A big, fat goose egg.

Obviously, I slowed way down. I could see enough of the road in front of me that I wasn't in immediate peril; I could see fine through the rear window and there was no one behind me at all. So at a hesitant crawl, Aisling and I meandered our way into the little town we were approaching, just a quarter of a mile distant, thank heaven, and pulled off at a mini mart so that I could break the big ice cubes (or maybe they should be called "free form ice sculptures," I don't know) off the wiper blades.

I guess I don't know my own strength. I thought I was being as tender as a mother sheep with her little ewe lamb, but when I gently pulled up on the wiper and started breaking off the ice sculptures, the whole thing came off in my hand in a most distressing manner. I stood there, holding it in my gloved hand, looking at it blankly.

"Whadja do that for?" Aisling asked.

"I didn't do it on purpose. It just...came off," I said. I felt stricken, as if I'd just harmed the van.

"Are you going to be able to see?"

"I am definitely hoping so, but there are no guarantees."

The piano teacher lives out in the country, just beyond the hamlet with the mini mart and I felt instant misgivings about traveling any farther with a disabled windshield wiper. You just never know when you're going to find yourself behind another vehicle on these sloppy, slippy roads, getting all splashed with dirty snowsoup, so the only course of action was to turn it all around and creep cautiously back home, where my husband was not best pleased to find that I had apparently wrenched the wiper off our vehicle with malice aforethought.

"Whadja do that for?" he asked.

You know, I didn't think so when I first woke up, but it's looking as if it may turn out to be one of Those Days.