Stuck

We are stuck. Snowbound. And I'm not happy. I'm denying the very real possibility that I won't be home for Christmas, only in my dreams.

We were supposed to leave town on Saturday afternoon, just in time to miss the bad weather coming in. As we said goodbye to our driver (hey, let's take a car! Then we don't have to park! Easy!) and walked into a stalled airport. Southwest had just cancelled all flights for the day...and we had no way home.

So after a few teary calls to Mom, we tried to arrange for Plan B. All flights to Sacto were booked so we decided to stay at an airport hotel and try to fly into Oakland on Sunday morning on a 6:30 am flight. And we booked an evening flight on Southwest as Plan C.

Wait, I need to stop laughing at our naive optimism before I continue...

After a fairly restless night, wake up at 5am to a cancellation notice with early indication that all flights would be cancelled that day. I didn't have the energy to wait in lines that snaked all over the airport just to be told there is no chance for getting out. We watch the news on the area-wide ice storm with growing dismay and turned our attention to getting ourselves home.

We heard that taxi's were all chained up and ready to go, so we made our way out to the taxi stand (did I mention that we were dragging all our holiday luggage and a three year old with us?) and found the best damn Russian taxi driver in the Portland Metro area. Don't ask us how much the ride cost, or how many times we cringed as he made fairly bold moves - but it was worth it to see our home and get inside.

Once home we moved on to plan D and E - flights booked for Tuesday and Wednesday, and tentatively discussed Plan F - driving. I also stared into my fridge with dismay - we had dumped most of our fresh food so that it wouldn't spoil in our abscence.

I have four wheel drive, but the quarter-inch sheet of ice on top of a half foot of snow took the car out of the equation for a grocery run. Luckily the fixins for potato soup were easily on hand and we had a warm dinner and warm beds to look forward to.

Then I woke up today to about a foot of snow, the news full of gloom, and plans D, E and F are looking a bit blurry. Rob has strapped on a pack and snow boots to walk down a very big hill to the grocery store to get us milk and a few odds and ends. Colin is starting to go a bit kookoo. I'm definately going kookoo.

The frustrating thing is that the rest of the state is fairly snow-free - so if we could get out of our neighborhood and the metro area, we would have open roads. But I have to demur to Rob on this one as he would be the one doing the driving out of our snow-bound hood. He doesn't think our four-wheel will be enough, and I don't have chains.

So...that's my sad tale. Hope to have something good to post in the next few days, because otherwise I'll be posting pictures of Colin opening recycled gifts and some pretty sorry stockings with canned soup inside.