Olivia and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Warning: Contents Unabridged)

For the sake of my sanity, I'm willing to overlook the awfulness that was my Monday. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that the day partially redeemed itself, if for no other reason than how cute Taffy looked falling asleep on my legs last night. (And, of course, an all-new House.)

But today. 

I'll give you just enough back story so you can follow along: I'm working on a magazine article right now that requires me to contact four local semi-celebrities to find out various items of information about their travel preferences. The article was due today. As of last night I was only halfway done because two of my four contacts had yet to get back to me. I emailed my editor, near tears, apologizing profusely for letting him down and for fact that I wouldn't have the piece done on time. I didn't hear back from him (or anyone else, for that matter) before I went to sleep, so I spent a restless night stressing with a pounding headache. (I don't eat when I'm stressed, so my body was not pleased that I'd been starving it).

Ice. Deadly ice.

This morning I woke up super early and left the house to catch the bus that comes before the one I usually catch so I could make it to work on time even if traffic was bad. We had our first real snow of the season yesterday and the roads are horrendous. When I woke up it was 18 degrees (that's -8 degrees C if any of my Aussies are reading) and the streets were glistening with ice. So I slid my way up the hill to the bus stop, caught the bus (which was surprisingly running on time) and got into the city with no problems. I arrived at work at 8:30--when they open, and an hour before I usually get there--and rode the elevator to the fourth floor. I got off and noticed immediately that the office door was closed. Confused, I tried the handle. Locked.

Even Taff was cold! My poor little baby.

I rode the elevator back down to the lobby and called my dad. "Could you check my work email?" I asked him, hoping that there was something from the managing editor explaining why no one was in the office. "Here's one," my dad said, and proceeded to read it. It was not from the managing editor, who is in charge of the interns, but from the editor of the article I'm writing who was responding to the frantic email I'd sent him the night before. At the end he mentioned that "not very many people" were going in to the office today, so I should work from home. He'd sent it at 8:31 this morning--one minute after I got to the office. Because I live out in the boonies, getting to work on a normal day requires me to leave my house at 7:55. This morning I left at 7:25. Even if I'd taken my usual bus I wouldn't have gotten the email.

Okay. Fine. I left the building and walked up the treacherous ice block that was University Avenue. The 522 bus was supposed to come at 9:06 and it was then 8:56. No problem, I can wait. And wait. And wait. It pulled up at 9:30 and got easily out of the city. Rather than cross the 520 floating bridge, the 522 takes Lake City Way which, for those unfamiliar with the Seattle area, runs north of the lake. So we were on the freeway just inching along when we came to the LCW exit...which was blocked off by a snow plow and three cop cars. Behind the automobile barricade was a pile-up of at least ten cars trapped in the snow. 

At this time, my fellow passengers decided it was necessary to shout out alternate routes to the bus driver who clearly didn't have any idea what the hell she was doing. We took the next exit and crept down a hill where we passed a Metro bus idling in a snowbank. One passenger shouted, "You should get yourself a 522!" and another exclaimed, "Off-roading with the 5-2-2!" He liked his comment so much that he repeated it several moments later. (And yes, I wrote all of this in my notebook. What can I say? It's the writer's curse.) We eventually wound up on Aurora, then 125th, then Lake City Way, and it was smooth sailing until we hit Bothell. 

For some reason, our bus driver found it absolutely necessary to stop right outside this cafe called the Lyon's Den, and as she disembarked the vehicle she shouted, "I'll be right back! I need to do something...and it's not coffee!" (at which point I was thinking, if you need to use the bathroom, just say so). She got back on and tried to pull back into the street--tried being the operative word. The more she hit the gas, the more the back of the bus swung out into the road. It was like a V collapsing in on itself. 

"Shit!" the driver screamed. "Shit shit shit!" The guy sitting behind me got up immediately and headed to the front. "I can take it from here," he said--as if he meant to drive--and climbed down onto the sidewalk. About ten minutes passed full of quiet passenger murmurings of "What's going on?" (I think it's pretty clear, guys) and "Aw man! This is just perfect" (is it? Really?). My absolute favorite moment of the day--and maybe one of my top twenty favorite moments of my life--was when this guy who had been sleeping jerked his head up and said aloud, "We stopped!" Astute observation, sir. He then proceeded to look exceedingly confused, and eventually meandered up the aisle and off the bus, looking very much like he was staggering out of a bar in a drunken stupor.

Cayenne is a snow badass.

I followed not long after, when I realized that I could conceivably be sitting in that bus until spring came. It took me an hour to walk home, slogging through two inches of snow in my thin, totally non-snow-proof navy blue Keds. By the time I got home, there was white everywhere and I was convinced I'd have to amputate my toes--if I even still had toes. I went immediately to my mom's studio where her sympathy almost made up for the awful events preceding it. "Oh honey!" she exclaimed, "Let's get you inside! I banked up the fire! Do you want some hot chocolate? I bought marshmallows! Oh, you poor thing! Are you just frozen?" We walked inside the house at 11:30, almost three hours after I left the office. On a normal day, the commute is 45 minutes. 

In case you missed the memo, it's cold.

But that's not the end. Oh no. This, my friends, is the story that keeps on giving. I checked my email practically immediately after walking inside. I had one from the web editor saying "I hope you all got the email from [the managing editor] telling you not to come in today." Wow. Thanks. And while I appreciated the email from the editor of my article telling me not to stress about the unreachable contacts, he said I should aim for getting the article to him by tomorrow. Guess what. No one's in their office today. (There's kind of a lot of snow.) Which means no one is getting back to me today. Which means no article tomorrow. 

It's 2:10pm and I still can't feel my toes. 

Addendum: You can call us Pacific Northwesterners a lot of things, but "snow folk" is not among them. When my dad and I were driving into Seattle yesterday--this was before there was any snow accumulation on the ground at all--we passed two plows headed into Woodinville on the freeway. One flake was enough to assemble the big guns, and evidently two inches of white is all it takes to cripple the city. The Apocalypse isn't coming, friends. It's already here.