stressed out, mostly by roads. my life has a lot of driving now, sometimes four trips into town or halfway to town, today at two whole ones (20 mi. there, 20 back) and two half ones (~10 there, 10 back). the first half goes over a mountain and has about five miles of gravel. the gravel in some ways is not as bad as the paved, when the water starts freezing, as it's doing tonight. The mountain is worse, about four degrees colder than the valley, and wetter. the temp tonight is between 30 and 34.

so the trip is varied, and my last one is tonight at about eight. it has been snowing hard, and the problem with that is that the snow will cover up the ice. there are a lot of windy roads and sheer drop-off edges where, you make a mistake, you can go right off the side of the mountain. it will take a lot of concentration and alert driving. i've basically been resting and worrying all day.

but then, in the morning, get up at 4 30, and one boy has practice at 6. not sure if he'll have one tomorrow, because he had games today. but my guess is, yes. and after a long night, even if it doesn't rain, it freezes harder. wet spots on the road become icy patches. hairpin turns become treacherous.

i'm doing all my driving in an old subaru, bashed up a little, but 4-wheel-drive, and pretty stable on the roads. the one car we have is a little to delicate for the hard gravel, and it's got a tire blown out. the truck is still at the stable where my wife had it when she fell off the horse. but it's not so great on these roads. it's heavy, and bigger, which is good on the gravel generally, but if it hits ice or snow it's way too much weight on a couple of large tires, and i don't trust it as much as the sube. if the snow gets over a foot, the truck might be best. but if i'm dealing with ice and snow combination, i want to be low on the ground, and able to go slowly.

the heater is erratic, but the sube has a butt-warmer that is wonderful.

so today, going down to the bus stop, which was halfway, there was a wide variety of weather. only raining, way out here, wet and muddy. but on the mountain rain turned to snow. down at the bus stop, next valley over, it was snowing hard, like rain, but the roads were clear. going back up the mountain the hard snow was sticking and over an inch already, still snowing hard. but back down in my own valley, where i expected it to be wetter but warmer, puddles on the road had turned to ice. treacherous! a truck in front of me slowed way down, and i did too. it was something to see - a huge sheet of ice.

i actually had some time off today. a kid was sick at school and i brought her home - a young one, one who i should stay with, not go out, not go get the truck or fix the tires. i stayed put. i tried to work - finishing my leverett book, and making a couple of webpages which i'll show. limited success. i was too frazzled to really think about anything, and putting old webpages onto new blogs involved some coding that was just too hard. i was involved in this thick html that was beyond me - and finally i just gave it up. i play a lot of online boggle these days - oddly relaxing - and mostly just checked the weather. at the 4 00 ride we went down and picked up the highschooler at the corner. it was snowing cats and dogs. i got worried, but we made it ok.

now it's dinner. trying to come up with something acceptable.