The weather is terrible. We’ve been having the kind of weather that strikes fear in your heart when you look out the window and see completely white-out conditions with gails of wind and branches of trees snapping off due to the weight of the snow and the freezing temperatures.This isn’t winter. This is more like tundra. Most kids are more likely to check the radio to see if school is open, rather than to see if it’s closed.

A couple of weeks ago, when this weather first started, I was in the office when I noticed that I had received a phone call on my phone that I had apparently missed.

As it turns out, it was from my supervisor, calling to advise we all stay home that day due to weather conditions.

Evidentally, he’d called while I was in the shower and left a message, but since I missed the call I was the only one to come in to work that day.

I worked until about 3:00pm and decided I’d better get back home and work the rest of the day from home.

About that time, anyone and everyone who had gone to work that day had been sent home, so there was a lot of traffic.

As I pulled up to one of the lights, it became obvious that my car wasn’t going to stop. Rather than hit the car directly in front of me, I tried for the lane next to it. The slight turn of the wheel sent my car into a very slow 360 degree spin and that sick feeling in my stomach that you know you’re going to hit something, followed by the even worse sound of it actually happening.

I ended up hitting an oncoming van that was also struggling to stop at the light and had her nose out in the middle of the intersection on collision. The impact wasn’t bad and neither of us were going very fast. In fact, neither of our airbags blew, an impressive feat for a head-on collision.

We drove our cars out of the intersection and got them out of the way so traffic could continue as we swapped information and waited for the police for about 15 minutes.

Eventually, they showed up and, to add literal insult to injury, the cop cited me by saying, “I know the roads are really bad and it’s really icy but this is a citation,” and he handed me a slip of paper.

I’ve requested a court date be scheduled to get him to stop his sentence at, “…it’s really icy.”

I drove my dented car to my mechanic who promptly said, “oh, we don’t do body work.”

He then took me across the street to the body shop they work with.

The next day, they called to tell me that it would take 5 days to get my car repaired. From there, I proceeded to answer questions, fill out forms and make phone calls to my insurance and make preparations for a temporary car rental.

It’s now been 11 days that I’ve been renting a car and my car is still in the shop waiting for parts. I’m less than enthusiastic about the outcome of this. Call me impatient.

The worst part? I left my garage door opener in my car at the shop. Every day I call and they say it’ll be ready tomorrow so I don’t go over and pick up the remote… and every day I have to get in and out of the car to park it in the garage.

Bottom line: Inconvenience on top of impatience on top of insult to injury. Anybody got some Menthos?

The moral of the story: check your messages before leaving the house.