Friday, February 18, 2011

The Great Blizzard of 2011

We survived our first Iowa blizzard.

Our Parking Lot
Our Car

Clearing Our Walkway

Moving here, I thought snowstorms like this one were par for the course--I expected a couple giant storms a year. Turns out, this one was kind of a big deal.

Here's the problem: nurses don't get snow days. I thought about bemoaning that fact, but the truth is some great things came of the day:

I woke up to our parking lot deep with snow and the buses cancelled indefinitely. Now, there are a finite number of ways to transport myself from my apartment to the hospital 2.2 miles away. In fact, there are four: drive, bike, bus, or walk. The first three were effectively annihilated by the unreasonably high mounds of snow. I therefore, burdened with the guilt of sick patients and stranded coworkers, was motivated into employing method #4 of getting to work: walking through some rather deep snow. 2.2 miles of it. A blessing: some poor soul had walked most of the path before me, making the going much easier for yours truly. Thanks, whoever you are.

0.2 miles from the hospital, some good samaritans in an SUV gave me a ride the rest of the way. Thanks, mother of a baby in the NICU.

Somewhere along the way, I realized I'd forgotten my shoes. The only footwear I had available to me were Isaac's snow boots, two sizes too big.

Oops.

A coworker lent me her shoes, just my size. Thanks, Becky.

That night, Isaac shoveled the car out to come get me so I didn't have to walk back home. Thanks, dear.

I came home to find our parking lot plowed and all the sidewalks shoveled. Meaning someone else out there also had to work on a snow day. Thanks, shovel man.

I'm positive that I'd rather be a nurse than the shovel man.

3 comments:

  1. Camber, you are most definitely my hero. The next time that I find myself in a hospital on a super snow day, I will take the time to appreciate how each of the nurses got there to take care of (after I'm done complaining about how I got there, through the mounds of snow, with a bleeding leg or something...)

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  2. I agree that I appreciate the shovel man's work, but I wouldn't want to be him!

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  3. Oh gosh! I remember in Cincinnati how they'd declare a "Snow Emergency" and close down the city and I still had to go to work. But that was only for a few inches of snow and/or ice! haha. And it would have taken me a LOT longer to walk the 7 miles to work! Thank goodness I never had to do that. I'm glad you survived "Snowmageddon". St. Louis got lucky and didn't get much that time.

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