What A Day This Has Been...

It started with a 5:17am email from the school district: Schools CLOSED today. The girlie wanted to get up at six, and there was no cajoling her back to sleep, so there we were, up and at 'em. Once it was light outside, I ventured out to peer at the driveway, lusting for the New York Times which never did come. I made my way up our steeply sloped driveway only by climbing in the dirt along the edge; the driveway itself was a slick of ice. I determined the road to be treacherous, so I slid back into the house and emailed the office. I tried this again a couple of hours later - same result. I resigned myself to the fact that we weren't going anywhere beyond the painting easel in the cellar.

Then the phone rang. "Nothing's wrong" said Robin. Beginning a conversation with "nothing's wrong" always means that something isn't right.

Robin lives up the street from my mother and had been driving by, only to find my mother bundled up on her front porch, surrounded by firemen and EMTs and police. It turns out that there'd been a tiny fire caused by a clogged nozzle on the furnace. The aide called the fire department, who came and did what they do. And because there was carbon monoxide registered in the house, and my mother's blood oxygen levels were low, they ferried her off to the ER.

I hauled the girl out of the house, icy roads be damned, dropped her at her grandparent's house, and drove down to join my mother in the ER. I found her, still wrapped in six blankets from her own house, and we sat around for awhile - the lack of urgency in the emergency room is always stunning - eventually they did some bloodwork, gave her some albuterol, and sent us home.

Meanwhile, my brother called the oil company and met the repairman at the house.

In many ways, it was hugely anticlimactic - nothing was really wrong, nothing more wrong than is always wrong. The EMTs were right in sending her to the ER - she couldn't stay at the house until it had been aired out and the furnace repaired. The most bewildering part was that Moky was so out of it at the hospital - it's like she just tuned out as a coping mechanism. I think she knows where we were, but I'm not all that sure. She did perk up when we got home - it must have felt like a huge relief, even though the house was still cold, and smelled of fuel oil.

It was an awful lot of drama for a snow day.