cashing in coupons

Confession: I am terrified of driving in the snow. I’m not from a snowy area. Give me ten inches of rain that floods the streets and I’d be fine, but give me a centimeter of snow and I begin to hyperventilate. I have a very loyal husband that offers to drive me to work when it snows, and even does so once in awhile grudgingly. I will drive to work in the snow, but nowhere else. Nothing else is so much of a necessity that I would risk my life. That is, until today.

I have the day off, being President’s Day and all. So I woke up with a giant list of errands to run. I packed myself and my list into my Saturn, scooped the snow drifts out of my way, and backed onto the street. It was only then that I realized it was snowing. And I panicked. I inched my car slowly down my street. My drive was more of a crawl. My speedometer needle looked as if I was parked. You know those senior citizens who are driving out on the streets and making commutes hell for everyone else? That was me.

I was pissing people off left and right: if I wasn’t going to die in an in-climate weather accident, I was certainly going to die in a road rage one. It hit me how stupid this was, and I thought maybe I should turn around. But I didn’t (Me making a U-turn in the snow? I might as well commit suicide and save myself the terror). I had a couple coupons burning a hole in my pocket. If there’s one thing I’m more of a freak about than driving in the snow, it’s coupons.

They expire tomorrow. It’s do or die time. And if it’s both, at least my coupons didn’t expire on me. So I ran all of my errands. I used all my coupons. And by the time it was time to head home, the roads were melted and life was back to calm once again. Getting my heart rate up reminds me I’m alive.