this is why i have a blog

it was a chilly saturday evening and michelle, my dear friend and former mission companion who was visiting from delaware, and emdawg and i decided to go see a movie (it was "atonement" and it was very good, but that is not what this post is about). when em came into the theater she said that she was a little worried about getting out of her parking spot. she had parked on a lot of ice, she said, and was pretty sure she would be stuck. and she was. when the movie was over, michelle and i watched to see if she could get out. and she sure couldn't. she has a stick shift with front wheel drive, and it just wasn't doing the trick. see exhibit A. (i might also add that emdawg had her sister's entire christmas in the back of her lodged car. so the urgency to un-lodge it was, well, great.)




michelle and i tried pushing the car from the front while em floored it, but that didn't work either. so we decided to head to a grocery store to buy some salt and/or sand to improve the situation. we also called burly-man chris (aka: KFC, wolverine, chrissy-poo-poo) to help, but he was on a date and we were pretty sure we could handle it once we had a little traction. our first stop was albertson's. we asked a woman where we could find salt, and she said we had to pay for it inside and then pick it up outside. two strange men in front of us in line were buying a lot of meat, some of which bled on the turning conveyor. to review, there was a puddle of blood on the turning conveyor. em, who does not eat meat, was particularly disgusted by this, but not as disgusted as when she looked down and saw that she was standing in a puddle of blood on the floor. i wish i had a picture of this, but i don't. you'll just have to trust me. it was yucky. but, we shook it off, paid for the salt and then went outside to get it. sadly, the only kind of salt they had was for water softeners. not exactly what we needed. em got a refund and we moved on.



the next store we passed was rite aid. as it was only 9:45 on a saturday night, we figured it was worth a try. we did not figure that it was closed. but it was. em was not happy. we don't like rite aid.




right next to rite aid is a chevron gas station. gas stations have car related things, so we decided to check there next. just as i pulled up to the door, the station attendant was hanging a sign in the window. when i got out of the car to ask if he had any salt, he started waving his hands and shaking the door to show me it was locked, then pointed at the sign and ran away. see below:



me: "did that really happen?"
em: "he must have the runs."

and so, off we went to smiths. we drove by where we though the salt would be, and all we saw was more blasted water softening salt, but em went inside to check, just in case, while michelle and i waited in the car. isn't she cute?



and then, we got a phone call. there was salt! and em was buying it! from a brazilian named rodgrido. we heart smiths, and we heart rodrigo. armed with salt, and some peanut m&ms, we headed back to the stranded car. happily, it was still full of presents.







in another stroke of luck, em had a knife in her car, which she used with great skill to open the magical salt. we waited with great anticipation while she poured the salt behind all the tires, and on the giant mountain of icy snow behind the poor, stuck car. we took our positions, hands on the hood, ready to push with all our might. (emdawg would like me to add here that "might" is a relative term when attached to michelle and me. but, we tried.)






and it worked! with a great rev of the engine, a big push and a prayer, em's car, full of presents, was free!




a true christmas miracle.