So you think you had a bad night?

I called Dr. Moo last night to wish her a Happy Valentine's Day and see if I could do a little whinocerousing to her about the nasty sludge I was dealing with.

Turns out her day was much, much worse.

She got over two feet of snow in 24 hours in her neck of the woods. I lived in Vermont for five years; I saw the worst snowstorm of my life there, from a fire escape. It was howling, screaming wind and blowing snow and when I got up in the morning I couldn't open the door because there was too much snow piled up against it.

According to the record books, this one was worse.

So anyhoo, the Moo. Her four wheel drive truck gets stuck in a snowdrift and she cannot get it out. Not after 20 minutes of forward and reverse, not after getting out and trying to shovel. Also she has no cell reception, natch. So she has to basically crawl, dragging her 75 pound hound dog Tess with her, because the snow is too deep for Tess to move in, to a cow barn. She then has to break into the barn.

In the barn there are cows but no telephone and the farmhouse is far enough away from the barn to make it a bit of a haul. Luckily another truck happens by with two men in it, one of whom is a feed store owner/judge. Annie and Tess pile into the truck; Tess sits on her lap. They crawl to Moo's place (commenting to her on how long they've heard her driveway is), all of them (well, save Tess) trying to see the road in front of them through whiteout conditions.

When they get to Dr. Moo's, they basically stop the truck in the middle of the road and let her and Tess, who is shivering from exertion, out.

Of course the driveway is not plowed. So then Moo has to half-drag Tess through the snow for 20 minutes until she finally, finally gets to her apartment. When she gets inside she finds her face is coated in ice and red as a tomato and that snow has blown into the apartment through the air conditioning unit.

Within half an hour Tess was gnawing on a bone and had forgotten the whole thing, but Moo, who likened the experience to Pa Ingalls getting caught in a blizzard, won't anytime soon.