More reasons to hate February

As if February isn’t bad enough. I’m already dry-skinned (under my eyebrows and on my earlobes? Seriously, skin?), constantly cold, frumpy, grumpy, with hair that’s simultaneously frizzy and flat, but now I am also sore, filled with internal battle-wounds from digging my car out of the ice and snow for several hours yesterday. I anxiously watched the snow fall at work on Tuesday until I left at noon to find the roads weren’t so terrible. I got home, parallel-parked on the city street, and settled in for the predicted winter storm. The college was closed on Wednesday, so I had the day off. I read a book. I watched a couple episodes of Friends. I did some organizing in my room. Then Thursday came. I called my boss and told her I would be late, since I had to dig my car out of the snow. She laughed and said she wouldn’t expect to see me, then.

I had no idea what I was in for.

On Wednesday, a lot of my neighbors went out and dug out their cars in the late afternoon after all the snow stopped. (Then it started again, but whatever.) I didn’t want to interrupt my day of not leaving the house, so I waited. And yesterday, I chipped away at the hardened snow coating my car, scratching away about $1000 worth of its value as I unwittingly scraped away small streaks of paint. For two hours I worked, turning my attention to freeing my wheels from the hard snow covering them and surrounding my parking space. I stopped frequently and gaped at all the icy snow I had yet to remove. Then I laughed at the absurdity of it. And then I got lightheaded a couple of times from the vigorous pounding I was doing with the shovel. Then I went inside for lunch.

After lunch and a half-hearted attempt to work from home, I tackled my car again, this time accompanied by my roommate. She shoveled the snow away from the passenger side of my car, then went off to try to chip away at the inches-thick block of ice coating her car wheel. A nice neighbor helped me by hammering – literally – away at the snow-ice keeping me from the street. Two hours later, I had shoveled an escape from parking space to street. Three hours after that, I hobbled outside – aching from my hard labor – to drive to rehearsal.

The drive was horrible. Horrible and terrifying. The roads in the city are mind-blowingly bad. Solid sheets of ice two inches off above the actual road, with pitted dips and icy lumps, which results in both bumping and sliding along the danger zone.

The last time I drove on ice, three years ago, I wrecked my Jeep and ended up tipped over in a ditch. Perhaps I still have emotional issues from that, because as I was driving last night, I was hyperventilating and crying. I kept trying to calm myself down – “Breathe slowly, Jill” and “It’s okay, stop freaking out” – but I would pretty quickly end up back in the head space of terror. When I finally crawled into the parking lot at our rehearsal space, I sobbed. We're talking genuine, no-holds-barred wailing, gasping and shaking. It was ridiculous. Then I was off-kilter for the rest of the evening, exhausted and shaky. And then they didn’t even get to the scene I’m in. That’s what happened.

I fucking hate February.