I did a crazy thing the day before yesterday. When I came home and told Steve, he told me I was grounded.

I was driving to the grocery store in Hudson and these two people ran out into the road and waved me down. To say that it is very snowy here would be an understatement and I thought they had an accident or something. It turned out to be two men and they wanted a ride to the train station. They hardly spoke any English. I nervously, stupidly seriously said, "you're not going to kill me are you?" and I was thinking, if they kill me everyone will say I was an idiot. The younger man just closed the door. I don't think he understood me, just could tell that I didn't say yes, and stepped away from the car. I waved for them too get in and an older man got in. It turned out the younger man wasn't coming, just his father. I indicated to him that he didn't have to sit on the baby seat and started toward Hudson. I tried to make conversation, "don't you have a car?" He says yes he has a pick-up truck. Where is it? He just says train station. Maybe it got snowed in there... I'll never know. I asked him his name and he says something that sounds like why-oo-ay and says he is Korean. I was still nervous he was going to club me over the head; maybe I should have let him in the front seat. It was a slow, slippery drive down Warren Street, Hudson's antiques center, covered in the gorgeous snow with no place to put it all. We made it to the train station - I didn't get whacked. He offered me money. I said no no no. I wanted to say, thank you for letting me do something nice for you without murdering me but I didn't think he'd understand. Maybe he was just as nervous as I was.

The next day, yesterday, we spent the day with Jes and Lee. We've made sort of a routine of going over to Lee's house for dinner on occasional Sunday nights - Aidan loves their daughters, Bella and Althea. Jes and I took a trip to a nearby farm store for some fresh bread for dinner. We went sans kids, left them with the dads and got ourselves pizza slices and sodas along with the bread. Jes saw a man and his son there that she knows, it's not really surprising, she always seems to know people wherever I go with her. Our next stop was going to be the supermarket in Hillsdale for beer and there is really no direct way to get there. I volunteered a back way. We were enjoying our freedom and I know Jes likes to take back roads. It's rare that I know of one that she's not familiar with. Only a couple of minutes after we'd turned off the main road, I caught some ice and slid into a snow bank. It was a slow, heavy collision with Jes' side of the car. I tried forward and reverse. Four-wheel drive be damned, two tires on the right side were not touching anything. There was a sharp drop off the road that had been hidden by the snow. There was a car behind us that had come to a stop. When we got out of the car we found that it was the man that Jes had said hello to at the farm store. He offered to give us a ride back to Lee's house, which was a bit out of the way for him, and we gratefully accepted and climbed into his mini-van with his son and their Golden Retriever.

When we got back to Lee's house and reported on our mishap, Lee immediately got a tow cable to go and pull it out with his Chevy Tahoe, a vehicle that I have occasionally derided in my mind as a gas guzzling behemoth. The more I told Lee that I didn't think they'd be able to get the car out, the more determined he became. Jes and I had some more nice conversation over white russians and meal preparations. I had told Jes earlier about the hitchhiker. She made me feel much better by telling me that she would have done the exact same thing and been nervous the whole time - that she had picked up a female hitchhiker once who subsequently looked up her phone number and harassed her for months. Anyway, we both attributed our luck with having her friend right behind us to hitchhiker karma. About an hour later Steve and Lee came back successful and with a case of beer. I have a new appreciation for the Chevy Tahoe (though still no patience for the common suburban/urban supersized SUV).

It seems that the only damage to my car is a bent rim. It's making my tire leak slowly - I can drive it in a pinch, but it needs to be fixed. I'm waiting for our mechanic to see if he can get a rim from a junkyard. The car is an '89 - there should be plenty in the junkyard. Just before the accident, Jes and I were singing the car's praises and I was showing Jes the odometer - it has over 200,000 miles on it.

In retrospect I need snow tires. I had that thought before several times while driving, I should have thought of it before I decided to take the scenic route.

Now if you made it through that whole story here's some pictures as a reward.

Wes has always collected deer remains but since deer rifle season (December) they have gotten fresher and more abundant. There are several legs like this one sticking up out of the snow around the barn. I guess the hunters cut them off and leave them behind. A couple of mornings ago, Wes showed up with an entire meaty ribcage, about a third the size of him. It wasn't frozen and was extremely bloody so it was probably recent road kill.

I don't know if I've ever posted pics of the outside of the barn, here it is in the snow with some fabulous icicles.

Here's a very big, very poor quality picture of Aidan's open-mouthed smile. My mom smiles like this in her baby pictures.

And here's a little pic of Aidan, Steve and Wes shoveling snow. Aidan likes to help with his big beach shovel.